The Dominican University men's volleyball program, ranked fourth in the latest AVCA Men's Division III Top 15 poll, returned to Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference (NACC) play with a three-set (25-23, 25-15, 25-18) sweep of the Aurora University Spartans on Tuesday evening at Igini Sports Forum. The win pushes the Stars to 12-0 on the year and 4-0 in NACC play.
"Great win for our guys tonight," commented
Cameron Andrew, the Stars' first-year head coach. "I'm proud of our ability to battle through a really tough first set and then find our groove going into the second. We've been telling the guys that as we continue to climb the polls, every team is going to throw their very best at us. AU did that in the first set tonight, but once we were able to settle in and play some good volleyball. I'm especially proud of Jake [Sidner], he played some of his best ball of the year tonight and had some big swings at big times."
The Stars out-hit the Spartans, .375 to .159, managing 36 kills to Aurora's 29 while committing just half of Aurora's 18 attack errors.
Jake Sidner knocked down a match-high 10 kills on just 17 attacks without committing an error.
Jack McGuire ran the offense, dishing out 23 assists and managing six kills of his own on eight attempts. McGuire used six different attackers, with
Troy Kates and
George Kougan knocking down six kills and
Mat Molloy and
Ethan Klosak managing four apiece. The Dominican attack picked up momentum, hitting .286 in the first set, .375 in the second and closing out the match, hitting .444 in the third set.
Defensively, the Stars limited the Spartans' attack to a .159 hitting percentage for the match, including a .091 attack percentage in the clinching third set. The Dominican block set the tone, posting ten total blocks. Kates caused the most chaos at the net, logging six block assists while McGuire, Kougan and Molloy logged three total blocks apiece.
The Stars now hit the road, traveling to the east coast for four matches in five days starting with Marymount University in Arlington, Virginia, on Sunday, March 8.
"Now we try to get the team ready for a tough trip next week," continued Andrew. "We are going to play some good team all really quickly. So we will get rested up and improve on a few things before we hit the road."
