Outside the comfort of Dillon Gymnasium, which had seen a number of thrilling wins for the home team in the previous few weeks, the men’s volleyball team lost to both Penn State and St. Francis on its two-game Pennsylvania road trip.
The Tigers (7-7 overall, 3-4 Eastern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association Tait Division) faced the No. 6 Nittany Lions (18-5, 9-1) on Friday night. Penn State extended its undefeated streak in the EIVA Tait Division to 9-0 by defeating the Tigers quickly in three sets, 30-20, 30-24, 30-24. The win wrapped up the EIVA regular season title. The following evening, the Nittany Lions gave up their claim to the title after a 3-1 loss to Rutgers-Newark.
Despite the loss, the Tigers improved upon their performance in their last game against Penn State in February. Freshman outside hitter Pat Schwagler, the reigning EIVA player of the week, led the team with 13 kills, and the outside-hitting trio of senior Carl Hamming, junior Vincent Tuminelli and freshman Sean Cotter combined for 21 digs. Sophomore setter Scott Liljestrom supplied 32 of the team’s 35 assists.
The Nittany Lions were able to hold the Tigers to a .091 attack percentage in the first set. While the Tigers were able to improve to .225 by the third set, playing upon their trend of strengthening in the later games of the team’s matches, they were unable to push the match to a fourth set. The Lions had 44 digs to Princeton’s 29 and a .500 team attack percentage in the first set.
“We’ve been getting a lot better over the course of the season,” Schwagler said. “I think it really shows.”
Schwagler added that the team uses Penn State’s national ranking as motivation. “We can play with the best,” he said. “It adds to our confidence that we’re getting closer and closer to beating them.”
Freshman middleblocker Michael Dye commented on the team dynamic highlighted this weekend by a strong underclassman effort with leadership from Hamming and senior middle blocker Jeff McCown.
“The older guys have more experience with college games in general,” Dye said. “They set a pace and give [the underclassmen] mental and physical support. They also keep their composure.”
Saturday afternoon was the second meeting between St. Francis (9-10, 2-4) and Princeton. With the memory of the five-set match in which Princeton prevailed on Feb. 27 still fresh in its mind, the Red Flash returned the favor by defeating the Tigers 30-21, 20-30, 30-28, 26-30, 15-7.
Liljestrom contributed the majority of the team’s 68 assists while Schwagler, Hamming and Cotter each contributed 10 digs. On par with the evenly spread offense that has showed the depth of the team throughout the season, seven different players each contributed five spikes. Schwagler led the way with 24 kills while McCown followed closely with 20.
The Tigers again struggled with their defense, recording only six blocks to St. Francis’ 38. In terms of team blocks, Princeton managed five to St. Francis’ 19. While it was a close match that saw 23 tied scores throughout the five sets, St. Francis had a .625 team attack percentage in the fifth set, taking the lead and sealing the victory on their home turf.
“Going into the fifth set, we felt pretty confident, because we’ve won all our fifth sets this season,” Schwagler said. “We got into a deep hole early in the game and missed way too many serves.”
Dye agreed with Schwagler, adding, “We had a streak where we lost six or seven points in a row and they knocked us down by eight points. We were unable to come back from that.”
Asked what the Tigers would take away from the weekend losses, Schwagler said, “We need to find a way to win away games.”
“It’s harder to play in a gym full of another team’s fans,” Dye added. “We have to form our own fire.”
The Tigers will attempt to do just that when the team travels to NYU this Tuesday before returning home on Friday for a Tait Division matchup against George Mason.
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