Men’s volleyball downs EIVA Hay rival Harvard 3-0

HUNTINGDON, Pa. -- Juniata College men's volleyball hit .397 for the match and sided-out at 83 percent to make short work of EIVA Hay rival Harvard University in a 3-0 win over the Crimson, ending a three-weekend home stand Saturday afternoon.

Set scores for Juniata were 25-15, 25-18, and 25-18. Juniata's win was vital to earning a slot in the EIVA Tournament; Juniata improves to 4-0 in the Hay Division, and remains in first place.

Freshman opposite hitter Alex McColgin (Hamburg, N.Y./Hamburg) paced the Juniata attack with 10 kills, logging only three attack errors on his 16 swings to finish with a .438 attack percentage. McColgin had a hand in two of the team's seven blocks, and finished the afternoon with a team-high 12.0 points.

Senior outside Chris Vrooman (Baden, Pa./Ambridge Area) tallied nine kills on his 18 attacks, while junior middle Ben Wolff (Meadville, Pa./Meadville) finished with seven terminations on twelve attacks. Freshman outside hitter Ross Madden (Richmond, Va./Deep Run) logged six kills, with sophomore middle John Proudt (Evanston, Ill./Evanston Township) putting down four kills.

Setter John Almquist (York, Pa./Central York) tallied 31 assists with a three aces. Mike Kraft (York, Pa./Eastern York) sprawled for three digs with a serve receive percentage of .857.

The Eagles held Harvard to a .159 attack percentage. The Crimson tallied 29 kills but committed 18 attack errors on a team total of 69 swings. No hitter for Harvard tallied double digit kills, but Matt Jones put down a team-high eight kills, but had six errors hitting .091 on the match. Harvard was only able to convert on 57 percent of Juniata's serves.

Juniata opened the match on a five point run, and the Eagles closed the first two sets pretty easily. But after a break between sets two and three, Harvard was able to stick with the Eagles. A timeout by Juniata at 17-15 gave the Eagles the momentum to finish the match.

After the timeout, a McColgin kill and two service aces by Madden put the Eagles up 21-16. Harvard called a timeout to temporarily stop the Juniata run, after which the Crimson earned their last point of the match. A service error by Owen put the Eagles up 23-18, and Almquist went on to serve back-to-back aces to close out the match.

Juniata begins a seven-match road trip on Saturday, Feb. 25, when it travels to Chicago, Ill., to take on Loyola University.

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