Within 24 hours the Ball State men’s volleyball team won six out of eight sets, completed its East Coast sweep and brought its overall record to 3-0.
Winning both matches 3-1, Ball State beat NJIT (1-2) on Friday and Sacred Heart (0-3).
After a 10-and-a-half-hour bus ride Thursday, the Cardinals defeated the Highlanders 29-27, 28-26, 20-25 and 25-16 on Friday. The third set loss was the first set the Cardinals have dropped this season.
Senior outside hitter Greg Herceg paced the Cardinals, as he did in their first match, with a match-leading 20 kills. Herceg added two service aces and seven digs to round out another impressive night. Coach Joel Walton attributes Herceg’s success to meeting opportunities that are afforded to him.
“Our setters are starting to give him confident and consistent sets,” Walton said. “Then Greg [Herceg] has been able to take advantage of teams gambling towards the middle to stop our middles.”
Defensively the Cardinals held the Highlanders to a 9 percent hitting percentage, and did not allow a single Highlander to connect on double digit kills. In the initial game plan, Walton said the team would need to have well-formed blocking sets to stop the various attacks the Highlanders are capable of throwing out.
“On tape we saw that they like to hit a lot of tip and roll shots,” Walton said. “I thought our guys did a great job of taking those away.”
After the match that saw two overtime sets, the team was rewarded with a trip to its favorite East Coast eatery, Tops Diner.
The next day the team took the hour-and-a-half bus ride to Fairfield, Conn. to take on Sacred Heart.
In their match against the Pioneers, the Cardinals saw the majority of their points come from their middle attackers Matt Leske and Kevin Owens, who had seven and eight kills respectively. Owens’ eight kills led the team, showing much more parity in scoring than the Cardinals have been accustomed to thus far in the early season.
The middles for Ball State also came up big on defense, with two solo blocks and a match-high eight assisted blocks for Leske and a match-high three solo blocks and six assisted blocks for Owens, to go along with the team’s 19.5 blocks.
“I thought our offense was a little inconsistent, but our middles played well,” Walton said. “Not just on offense, but especially on defense.”
Junior Graham McIlvaine was a crucial component to the Cardinals’ win as well, registering 37 assists, and helping six Cardinals connect on at least five kills.
Both teams showed fatigue, both having played matches the night before as Sacred Heart fell to IPFW in five sets. In the fourth and final set, Ball State couldn’t seem to stop the Sacred Heart, needing four match points to finally seal the win.
“Sacred Heart played like a home team with its back up against the wall, they just kept fighting until the end,” Walton said.
Walking towards the locker room after the match, Walton said that senior libero Tommy Rouse posed the question to him, “when was the last time we were 3-0?”
The answer to Rouse’s question is 2006. The Cardinals started that season by rattling off 11 straight victories, and finished the season 21-7. This year presents an opportunity for Ball State to be the last remaining unbeaten team in Division I-II men’s volleyball.
The Cardinals enjoyed an 11-and-a-half hour bus ride back to Muncie, bringing their weekend total of hours spent on a bus to 23-and-a-half.
Ball State will be in action on Jan. 25 in Mount Olive, N.C., to play Mount Olive and then on Jan. 26 to play Barton in Wilson, N.C.
