UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – The No. 10 Penn State men's volleyball team continued its hot streak in EIVA play with another 3-0 sweep (25-11, 25-20, 25-16) over Charleston at Rec Hall's South Gym Saturday evening.
The win marked the seventh in a row for Penn State (11-6, 7-0 EIVA) and it was also the fourth consecutive win in straight sets.
HOW IT HAPPENED
With Penn State leading 4-3 early, the Nittany Lions rattled off a four-point run that included a Sam Marsh solo block and kills from Brett Wildman and Cal Fisher. Penn State held a 3-6 point margin for the majority of the set until Jason Donorovich stepped to the service line leading 16-10.
Donorovich had four aces in a Penn State six-point run, including three in a row, to all but seal the first game for the Nittany Lions.
Penn State's offense took over the second set as the Nittany Lions hit .667 (12-0-18). Five different attackers had kills as PSU balanced its attack. In addition, four Nittany Lions had service aces in the set.
Charleston battled back to pull within three points at 23-20, but PSU regrouped after the timeout to take the next two points to win game two.
Penn State had another six-point spurt to begin the third set, this time with Cal Fisher serving. He had an ace in the run and forced several other Charleston mishaps with his serve to give Penn State easy points.
Cole Bogner also had a serving run to extend Penn State's margin to plus-10 at 13-3. From then on out, the Nittany Lions had no trouble essentially trading points for the rest of the game to win by nine 25-16. Brett Wildman had five of his team-high nine kills in the third.
MIKE ANDERSON MAN OF THE MATCH
Jason Donorovich had another double-digit point performance with 10.5 points. He set a personal best for the second night in a row with six service aces, surpassing the five he had Friday against George Mason. He also tacked on four kills and two blocks.
HEAR IT FROM THEM
Head Coach Mark Pavlik
- "I thought this was a great culmination of the weekend. It was a great culmination of five matches in eight days. I thought we started rolling last weekend in game three with our physicality and it just kept climbing. I thought our serve and pass game was as good as its been. I think more than anything else we're just a tough team to play against."
- "I think we're starting to form a personality that if we embrace the physicality of our serving and really keep working on it we're going to be putting ourselves in positions to score points and score some easy ones."
Redshirt senior Jason Donorovich
Q: So you guys have won seven straight matches and four consecutive sweeps just what does that say about the team's confidence moving forward?
A: I kind of hit that last night too. Just talking about trying not to get cocky with it. We know that we have a bunch of ballers on our team. I mean last year we were that young team that really wasn't that experienced but now we've got guys who know how to read this game and like the level that we play at right now is super high.
Sophomore Cole Bogner
Q: What's it like for you setting to so many different depth options?
A: It's super easy due to the passing. Our passers have done a great job throughout the year no matter who we're facing. BYU really set it off at the beginning of the year. We pass extremely well against a very good serving team and then when I go to the hitters that I have who are consistently hitting .400, .500 on a night it just makes my job super easy.
NOTABLE STATS
- Brett Wildman hit .316 with his nine kills and had two digs plus one ace.
- Cal Fisher hit above .400 for the third time in the last four matches at .455 with 6 kills, three aces, four digs, and two blocks.
- While no Nittany Lion had above 10 kills in the match, seven different players had at least two kills.
- Penn State won the service battle by a significant margin once again with 14 service aces while only allowing three for Charleston.
NEXT UP
Penn State heads to Columbus for the second time this season to take on the Buckeyes March 8 before flying out to California for its spring break trip to face UC San Diego and UC Irvine March 11 and 13.