Well, I think this title speaks for itself this week for the Saint Xavier Men’s Volleyball team.
The Cougars were in action two weeks ago against CCAC rivals Calumet College of Saint Joseph and Trinity Christian College.
This past week the Cougars had a bye week, so it’s a good time to recap what happened with the Cougars during conference action.
Here’s the good news: the Cougars played what could have been called their best game of the season against Cal of Saint Joe. The Cougars won against Calumet in three straight sets, a clean sweep.
The bad news: the Cougars lost against Trinity in three straight sets. The ending scores of the Trinity game were 25-19, 25-15, and 25-23. After that week of play, the Cougars are 3-3 in the CCAC and their overall record is 3-5.
Let’s take a look at what went right for the Cougars against Calumet.
First of all, the team had a .443 hitting percentage. This percentage is the third highest percentage in a single match in the history of this program. The Cougars collected 40 kills with only nine attacking errors. Calumet started out the first set with an early 3-2 lead. Sophomore middle blocker Ben Gabor would tie the set with a massive kill. After the kill from Gabor, the Cougars went on a 10-1 run. During this run, four different players from the Cougars pick edup some kills.
By the end of the first match, the Cougars went on another 6-9 run leading Calumet 18-8.
Sophomore middle blocker Mike Burci would end the 25-15 set with a kill.
The Cougars were on a mission and they did not stop there. In the second set, the Cougars picked up right where they left off in the first set.After three straight kills from Saint Xavier, they picked up the early 6-1 lead.Two of those kills were from Gabor. Calumet had the opportunity to answer back and closed the gap within two points. The Cougars were holding a 9-7 lead, but that lead quickly grew as the Cougars scored three points off of three consecutive errors from Calumet.
The Cougars were basically on fire during the second set. Burci would slam down another kill to give the Cougars a set point with score at 24-13. Calumet was able to hold of the Cougar’s win for a bit longer, but was quickly silenced after a kill from Burci to steal the Cougar win with a 25-15 score. Calumet was not going to give up that easily.
They were looking to force the Cougars into a fourth set after being down by two sets.
Calumet was able to tie the third set at 2 with back to back scores.The Cougars were not going to let this set slip away.
Senior middle blocker Brad Gadek would attack Calumet with a kill to put the Cougars in front for the rest of the set.
A run of five straight points would put Saint Xavier at a 14-7 lead, but Calumet had a four point run of their own to tighten the gap. Calumet was able to cut the set by three points with the Cougars only leading 19-16.
Junior outside hitter Jake Olson managed to put back-to-back kills on his stat sheet and got the ball rolling again for the Cougars. A few plays later, senior middle blocker, Tom Matonis dominated Calumet with his seventh kill of the night and a 25-17 win for the Cougars. Saint Xavier will be back in action in the Shannon Center on February 27th at 7:00 pm against the #4 Saint Ambrose University Fighting Bees.
In their second game of the season, the Cougars beat the Bees in five sets in Davenport, Iowa. This is the only team in the program’s history to beat St. Ambrose.
The Bees are looking for revenge against the Cougars this coming Tuesday night. Come out and support your Cougars as they look to beat the Bees for only the second time in SXU men’s volleyball history.
Christine Manika
Sports Columnist
Upcoming Schedule
2/27 vs (4) Saint Ambrose University at 7:00pm
3/2 @ Illinois Institute of Technology at 7:00pm
3/8 vs Lindenwood University-Belleville at 7:00pm