Both ranked teams in the EIVA, Penn State and George Mason, were upset on Saturday.
Second-ranked Long Beach State and No. 3 BYU are starting to break away from the MPSF pack, where USC pulled off another upset.
Lewis and Loyola won MIVA matches,
And Mount Olive won for the sixth time in a row to maintain first in the Conference Carolinas.
There NCAA men’s matches Sunday aftenoon, both in the MIVA where top-ranked Ohio State (14-0, 5-0) goes to its 38th in a row when it plays host to last-place Lindenwood (0-11, 0-6) and Quincy (3-9, 1-5) goes to McKendree (5-11, 1-4).
MPSF: USC beats Pepperdine, Beach, BYU, Stanford win
Two days earlier USC upset No. 6 Stanford. Now the up-and-down Trojans have knocked off visiting No. 9 Pepperdine 30-28, 25-12, 22-25, 23-25, 15-10 as Lucas Yoder had 21 kills, 12 digs, five blocks and two aces.
USC improved to 5-9 overall, 4-7 MPSF and marked the first time the Trojans won back-to-back match this season. Earlier this year they lost in five to the Waves (6-5, 4-4).
Lucas Lossone added 16 kills while hitting .323 for USC, while teammate Andy Benesh had 12 kills (hitting .435) and seven blocks, Matt Douglas had 18 digs and Ryan Moss had three aces.
David Wieczorek had 18 kills and 10 blocks for Pepperdine, Colby Harriman had 14 kills, Clay Carr had 11 blocks, Mitchell Penning had eight blocks and Alex Harthaller had seven digs.
USC hit .227 and Pepperdine .155. The Trojans were again without recent junior college transfer Gianluca Grasso, a starting outside hitter who missed his third consecutive match with an ankle sprain.
Long Beach State has won six in a row, all sweeps, the latest at UCLA 25-20, 25-23, 25-22.
Long Beach is 13-2, 9-1 and two games up in the win column over BYU in the league. No. 5 UCLA is 10-6, 7-5.
Sophomore outside hitter TJ DeFalco led with 15 kills and hit .483 to go with five digs, an assist, an ace and a block. Sophomore opposite Kyle Ensing had 11 kills and nine digs to go with three blocks and an ace. The Beach hit .404.
The Bruins were led by Daenan Gyimah, who had 13 kills and hit .800, and Dylan Missry, who added 10 kills and a career-best five block assists while hitting .320. His team hit .366 for the match.
BYU worked hard for a 27-25, 25-21, 25-22 win over visiting UC San Diego. The Cougars improved to 12-2, 6-1, while UCSD dropped to 5-9, 2-7 with its second loss in as many nights in Provo.
Jake Langlois totaled 13 kills and Tim Dobbert had 10 and both hit .333. Dobbert, Miki Jauhiainen and Joseph Grosh led with three blocks each
“It’s good to go through some adversity and stay collected,” BYU coach Shawn Olmstead said. “There were some bumps, but our guys stayed composed and were able to pull out the win. It was a good opportunity to get some guys experience that they’re going to need as we go through the season.”
UCSD, which had one ace and 18 service errors, got 13 kills from Tanner Syftestad, who had five of those errors.
Four BYU players had an ace each and their team had 15 errors, five by Langlois. Saturday’s match did not count in the conference standings.
Visiting Stanford barely shook off the loss to USC by beating Cal Baptist 25-20, 20-25, 17-25, 25-16, 15-11. Stanford improved to 9-5, 6-3, as Jordan Ewert had 16 kills and hit .306 to go with five digs, three aces and three blocks. Gabriel Vega added 15 kills, hit 481, and had seven digs, the last two stats season-highs.
Kevin Vaz led CBU with 25 kills. Luis Palos has 11 kills, six digs and three blocks, while Rohit Paul had nine kills and 10 digs.
MIVA: Lewis, Loyola win to set up big match-up
No. 7 Lewis improved to 11-3, 6-2 as it tries to stay within striking distance of Ohio State with its 22-25, 25-19, 25-20, 25-17 win over visiting Fort Wayne.
Senior middle blocker Jacob Schmiegelt had 11 kills, six blocks and hit .412. Kyle Bugee added seven kills and .455 and had six blocks. John Hodul had five kills and six blocks, one solo.
Fort Wayne is 4-13, 1-5. The Mastodons got 17 kills from Pelegrin Vargas.
No.10 Loyola took care of business against No. 11 Ball State, which 0-for-2 on its Chicago swing. The victory left the Ramblers 9-4 overall and also in the MIVA hunt at 5-1, while Ball State fell to 11-4, 3-3 and all but out of the race for the top. It’s still early, but the Cardinals are going to need some good things to happen to stay in contention for one of the NCAA Tournament’s two at-large bids.
Ben Plaisted led Loyola with 12 kills and hit .409. He had three aces and four errors, five digs and two blocks, one solo. Collin Mahan had nine kills and three blocks and Jeff Jendryk had eight kills and 10 blocks, one solo.
Matt Szews led Ball State with 12 kills and seven digs. Matt Walsh had five kills and his team’s only ace against eight errors.
Lewis plays at Loyola on Friday in a huge match for both teams.
Grand Canyon improved to 9-5 with non-conference sweeps over Benedictine Mesa and Cal Lutheran.
EIVA: Down goes Penn State, Mason
The standings are a quagmire with first-place Sacred Heart two games ahead of sixth-place George Mason.
Sacred Heart moved into the lead with Princeton at 3-1 as it upset No. 13 Penn State and Princeton did the same to No. 15 Mason.
Start with Sacred Heart, which won 21-25, 25-23, 25-23, 25-18 at Penn State. Christopher DeLucie led with 17 kills and nine digs and Michael Comens had 15 kills and hit .344 to go with four blocks. Their team had four aces and 16 errors.
Libero Joshua Ayzenberg had 22 digs and got nothing but praise from Penn State coach Mark Pavlik.
“I think it’s a great example of what a great libero can do for a team. Ayzenberg is the heartbeat of their team, and he averaged over five digs a game on us, he made some amazing on-on-one digs and kept them in rallies,” Pavlik said. “Game one we came out and did what we needed to do, we passed the ball, and we hit .364. Game two and three I don’t know if we expected them to just back off and mosey in and say `I don’t feel like competing,’ but I think at that point they started to out defend us they started to out compete us which is really disappointing.”
Penn State is 9-6 overall, 4-2 in the MIVA, while Sacred Heart is 10-2, 3-1
Aidan Albrecht led Penn State with 14 kills, and added 11 digs and three blocks.
Kevin Gear had seven kills, one assist, four digs and eight blocks
You’ve got to appreciate the witty headline on the Princeton website game story:
Super-Huhmann Performance Sends Princeton Past Reigning EIVA Champ George Mason 3-1
That’s because freshman middle George Huhmann had 10 kills in 10 swings with no errors and nine blocks — four solo — as the Tigers improved to 5-6, 3-1. Mason fell to 5-7, 2-3.
Parker Dixon had 13 kills and hit .346 and Kendall Ratter added 10 kills for Princeton.
Jack Wilson had 16 kills and hit .414 to lead Mason, which also got seven kills from Graham Gresham, who hit .667. Mason had two aces and 19 errors.
Also in the EIVA, Harvard beat Saint Francis 23-25, 25-16, 23-25, 25-16 and 17-15 to improve to 4-5, 2-2, while SFU dropped to 6-9, 3-3.
Freshman setter Matthew Ctvrtlik led Harvard with 13 kills, hitting .379, and 21 digs. Casey White had 11 kills and 11 digs. Trevor Dow and Riley Moore had 10 kills each.
SFU got 17 kills from Jeff Hogan, who hit .133. He had one of his team’s three aces and two of its 17 errors and five blocks, one solo Stephen Braswell had 15 kills, hit .289, an ace, an error, five digs and a block.
Conference Carolinas: Mount Olive wins, Barton loses
Mount Olive improved to 9-4 overall, 8-0 in the CC with its 25-22, 25-19, 25-20 win over Lees-McRae (4-8, 2-5). Robert Poole led the winners with nine kills and three blocks.
Barton saw its five-match win streak end at King 25-18, 17-25, 21-25, 25-23, 17-15. It left the Bulldogs 8-4, 7-2 CC, while King stayed a game back in the loss column at 11-2, 6-1.
Emmanuel lost a non-conference mach to Coker 26-24, 21-25, 26-24, 25-20, 15-8. Emmanuel is 2-10, Coker 8-2.
