Box Score WHO: Men's Volleyball at Sacred Heart
WHERE: William H. Pitt Center, Fairfield, Conn.
FINAL SCORE: Mason 3, Sacred Heart 0
KEY PLAYERS: Christian Malias – 13 kills (match-high), 6 digs; Paco Velez – 12 kills, 9 digs; Johnny Gomez – 12 digs (match-high); Bryant Ekstein – 6 kills (career-high)
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1st
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2nd
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3rd
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Total
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George Mason (12-11, 6-4 EIVA)
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25
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25
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25
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3
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Sacred Heart (6-14, 4-6 EIVA)
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12
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17
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19
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0
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Fairfield, Conn. – George Mason University's men's volleyball team picked up where it had left off on Friday and recorded its second win over Sacred Heart in as many nights on Saturday. The Patriots were even more dominant than the night before and swept the Pioneers in Pitt Center for their third-straight EIVA win.
MATCH NOTES
-Junior outside hitter Christian Malias rebounded from an off night on Friday and recorded a match-high 13 kills, while also adding 6 digs on the defensive end. Redshirt senior opposite hitter Paco Velez had another solid performance with 12 kills, but fell a dig short of another double-double. Freshman middle blocker Bryant Ekstein contributed a career-high 6 kills for the win while junior libero Johnny Gomez led the Patriots in defense with 12 digs.
-Austin Arcala repeated his team-best, 10-kill performance from Friday night, which he reached on better hitting, .152. Arcala also had 6 digs, only one less than libero Joshua Ayzenberg, who led the Pioneers.
-Mason's better start to the match materialized into a four-point lead at 7-3 on Malias' ace. Sacred Heart came within two at 9-7, but Mason went on a 5-1 run, culminated by a Velez kill that forced a Pioneer timeout at 14-8. Four-straight points for the Patriots right out of the huddle increased Mason's advantage to double digits at 18-8, but the players did not let their foot off the gas and outscored Sacred Heart 7-4 to close the opening set 25-12.
-The Pioneers picked up their first two leads of the match at 1-0 and 2-1 in the second set, but they were short-lived with Mason going on a 4-0 run to force the Pioneers into a timeout, 5-2. It was then Sacred Heart's turn to put a string of points together and build momentum when the home team won five-straight points on Tom Wisniewski's serving sequence to grab its largest lead of the contest at 9-6. The run finally finished with a service error, which was followed by kills from Velez and junior outside hitter Radoslav Popov to tie the set at 9 all. Mason was then the first team to pull away after several minutes of even play, taking a 15-13 on an attack error by Arcala. Two Patriot errors later got the Pioneers within one, most recently at 16-15, but Mason had the final say in the set, which they won 25-17 after going on a 9-2 run late on.
-Kills by Velez, Malias and sophomore setter Brian Negron, respectively, allowed Mason to pull away 8-4 in the third set and leave Sacred Heart with no remaining timeouts in the process. The latter timeout disrupted the Patriots' offensive rhythm and successive attack errors allowed Sacred Heart to cut the lead in half at 8-6, but a kill by Popov and an attack error by Robert Costigan, which followed a phenomenal diving dig by Negron, restored Mason's four-point lead, 10-6. After that moment, the Patriots never led by fewer than two points and effective swinging increased their lead to as many as five. That was the precise margin at 24-19, shortly before a block-out by Popov completed the sweep with the team's highest lead of the set, marking Mason's third-straight win in the Pitt Center.
STAT BREAKDOW
-Mason improved on its team hitting from Friday and hit .407 in the second match against Sacred Heart, recording 45 kills in the contest. The Pioneers improved in attack as well and recorded 29 kills on 94 attack attempts, hitting .117.
-The Patriots nearly doubled Sacred Heart in digs, 40-22.
-Malias had Mason's only ace of the match, tying the Patriots' season low, but Jay Hosack's team received .975 on the night and limited the Pioneers to only one ace as well. In addition, the Patriots committed a season-low six service errors.
-Malias and Negron each picked up a solo block for Mason, which outblocked Sacred Heart 6-3.
POST-MATCH QUOTES
“I am very proud of my boys. They have fought back from a tough opening stretch of the season, learning new systems and learning to play at a high level for long periods of time. We still have a long way to go, but they have turned a corner as a group.” – Mason's head coach Jay Hosack
NEXT ON THE COURT
Mason will return home for the remaining four matches of the regular season, all of which will be EIVA contests. The Patriots will first welcome NJIT to the RAC on Thursday night at 7 p.m.
