River Forest, IL – The #3 Dominican University men's volleyball team controlled the action all night as they defeated the Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE) in straight sets 25-18, 25-22, 25-20 on Tuesday night.
 
Jack McGuire found George Kougan for a kill to make it 9-8 early in the opening set. Back-to-back Trey Cowan service aces extended the margin to six, 16-10, but two Dominican attack errors cut the margin to just two, 19-17, and forced the home team to take a timeout. An Adrian Cebula kill out of the timeout steadied the Stars before finishes from Kougan (22-18) and Cowan (24-18) paved the way for a 25-18 first set win.
 
A Cebula service ace gave the Stars a 10-7 lead early in the second set but the Raiders would stay within two points until they eventually tied it up at 17-17 to force a Dominican timeout. A pair of MSOE errors out of the timeout gave Dominican a two-point advantage, 19-17, but the Raiders again knotted the set as the score sat at 21-21 in the closing stages. Consecutive kills by Kougan and McGuire pushed the margin back to two before McGuire set up Kougan for the kill to close out the second set 25-22.
 
Dominican jumped out to a 10-3 lead in the third set after a Mat Molloy kill but MSOE would hang around as it cut the deficit to five, 15-10, in the middle stages of the set. A Raiders service ace made it a three-point spread, 19-16, before Molloy came up with a timely kill to nudge the differential to four at 21-17. Consecutive Cebula service aces extended the margin to six before Kougan would again close out the set with another kill for the Stars to take it 25-20 and the match three sets to none.
 
"I'm really proud of our guys tonight," said Head Coach Cameron Andrew. "They did the best job so far this year of executing our game plan. We gave them a ton of information to think about and they were able to stay on top of all of it."
 
The offense ran through Kougan who recorded 17 kills while hitting it at a .593 clip. McGuire orchestrated the attack with 32 assists while Cowan had eight digs on the defensive end. Troy Kates and Kougan each picked up five blocks at the net.
 
"George (Kougan) was phenomenal tonight and I'm really proud of his effort," continued Coach Andrew. "He had a stretch of matches where he wasn't as strong and he took it to another level tonight."
 
"We are starting to get to the point in the year where we want to start thinking about postseason play but we really need to just buckle down in practice this week and go take care of business against Lakeland on Friday.
 
The #3 Stars will square off with the Muskies on Friday, April 2nd at 7:00 p.m.