UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – The No. 7 Penn State men's volleyball team dropped its first home match of the season to Ball State 3-0 (30-28, 25-19, 25-20) Friday evening at Rec Hall's South Gym.
The loss was the Nittany Lions' first setback after a four-match winning streak (4-3). Penn State was marred by 25 attacking errors, which bumped their team hitting percentage down to .147 (39-25-95) for the match.
Ball State (4-3) also had 8.5 team blocks and hit .273 (36-12-88) to counter Penn State.
The Nittany Lions top scorer was Brett Wildman with 10.0 points on 10 kills at .240 clip (10-4-25). BSU's Kaleb Jenness led all players with 11 kills and hit .259 (11-4-27).
HOW IT HAPPENED
The Nittany Lions outhit the Cardinals .270-.205 in set one, but BSU made a furious four-point rally when trailing 23-20 to flip the script and set up an early game point.
Penn State fended off the initial chance for Ball State to win the set, but both teams went back-and-forth trading points until a Nittany Lion service error followed by an ace from Jake Romano won the extended set for the Cardinals 30-28.
Ball State found another surge midway through the second set to take a 13-9 lead and force a Penn State timeout. The Nittany Lions struggled offensively in the second with an .071 hitting percentage (11-9-28), much in part to a stout effort by the Cardinals at the net with 5.5 team blocks for the set.
The Nittany Lions led 10-9 in the third set after a Jason Donorovich kill, but Ball State mustered yet another good sequence winning five of the next six points to lead 14-11, an advantage BSU would never let go.
Ball State only had one hitting error in the third game on its way to a .389 hitting percentage (8-1-18) while the Nittany Lions had 10 costly errors that brought their game total to 25.
HEAR IT FROM THEM
Head Coach Mark Pavlik
- I thought that the Cardinals ended up being happy that they won game one and I think that we might have overreacted to losing game one in the manner that we did. 23-21, over, pass, over, pass, then ace and then all of a sudden I thought we were reeling maybe for the first time this year. I thought we reacted in a manner that surprised me with "Oh my goodness we're behind! What happened? What are we going to do?" instead of just doing what we've done all year long and that is just forget that and play the next point."
- Hats off to Ball State. I thought that they did what they do really well, they hammer the ball into the top of your block and they'll get some kills out of it. We out-dug them by 10, but we weren't able to finish it with our transition game. I thought we left points on the table certainly in game one and game two and three we had opportunities to score and we couldn't just turn those points for us…Now we wash it off and we get ready for the Buckeyes tomorrow."
Senior Jason Donorovich
- "We're all super frustrated because we know what our potential is, we know what our abilities are in every aspect of volleyball and it just didn't really show tonight and I don't want to say that Ball State got lucky, but what you just saw out there from us is not what I have seen ever. I really don't think I've ever been a part of a team that's given an opponent that many points and things just weren't really clicking for us."
GAME NOTES
- Penn State's team hitting percentage of .147 (39-25-95) was its lowest output of the season.
- With his 10 kills, Brett Wildman extended his double-digit kill match streak to five.
- PSU out-dug Ball State 33-23, led by Calvin Mende with eight digs.
- Donorovich had two of Penn State three service aces for the match. He also added seven kills and two blocks.
NEXT UP
Penn State takes on nonconference rival Ohio State Saturday evening at Rec Hall beginning at 7 p.m.