March 6, 2024
Some great matches were on tonight’s slate that could affect our top 40 or conference rankings for year-end tournaments. Let’s start with the upset of the night. Springfield lost their first match of the season against D1 Concordia Irvine and then rattled off 12 straight wins and secured a regular spot in the IH top 5. Late February presented some challenges for the Pride with closer games and now 2 losses in their last 4 matches including a 3-2 slippage tonight to SUNY New Paltz. On 2/17, St. Joe’s Long Island pushed Springfield to the edge as the Pride avoided a reverse sweep in a grueling 5-setter. Then on 2/21, Lasell took the Pride to the limit but again Springfield avoided the loss with a strong 5th set. Despite hosting Stevens, the Pride were nailed by the Ducks in 4 sets before winning both ends of a home and home with Nichols but both matches were close as Springfield won 3-2 and 3-1.
The signs have been coming and there is a natural rivalry with Springfield and New Paltz that added extra drama to tonight’s loss at home. The Pride head into their Spring Break week looking to reflect on their recent downturn and get fired up for the remainder of the season.
For New Paltz, it was one more positive sign that their team is going in the right direction after a subpar start to the 24 campaign. Pat Wing has been outstanding during the mid-season adding another 19 kills to his season resume. Pat was fed 46 times tonight as the Hawks put a high level of faith into his expertise. AJ Fitzgerald hit .545 and added 7 kills and the Hawks had 12 aces for the match. NP has won 9 of their last 11 since losing to Springfield earlier in the season.
Hobart rolled over the Nazareth who is really struggling without superstar Owen Wickens. The Statesmen took it to the Golden Flyers in 3 straight with Naz getting to 18 as their highest set total. Andrew Kim was lights out as he hit .708 with 18 kills. Zack Farren had 40 assists for Hobart as they improve to 13-7. Hobart needed this one in their battle to make the top 6 in the UVC. They play New Paltz and NYU this weekend and will look to improve their 1-2 record in conference. Naz is winless in three tries in the UVC. NYU blew past Kean tonight in three sets in a non-league match up. Emerson Evans led the Violets with 10 kills and Devyn Nguyen had 34 assists.
Messiah and Stevenson fought to the death tonight in a 5-set nerve ripper. Messiah took set 5 by a 15-13 score to prevail in this important MAC matchup. Seth Graybill had 12 digs and Ryan Givens blasted 4 aces for the winners. Jacob Hamm was the main attacker tonight for Messiah with 17 kills.
Augustana improved to 14-2 on the season with a 4-set win over Illinois Wesleyan. Max Sellers had 16 digs and Aidan Bolen had 13 kills for the Vikings. Zach Moreano and Ty Heater combined for 19 kills on the attack.
Loras lost only their second set of the season in a 3-1 win over North Park. The DuHawks came out a bit flat in the first set, before pummeling NP over the last 3 sets by a score of 75-36. Joe Horn had 42 assists and 3 aces while Dorian Fiorenza and Corey Mayotte combined for 33 kills with both players hitting .333. #3 Loras is 16-0 and one of only three undefeated teams remaining at D3.
Owen Morrow spread 31 assists and Casey Goss, Jarod Hesse, and Aaron Marrs all had fine nights on the attack to propel Dominican to a straight set win over Illinois Tech. The Stars improved to 10-6.
Arcadia is also now 10-6 after getting by Widener tonight in three close sets. Andrew Ahn led the Knights with 12 kills but Terrell Turner stole the show on the attack hitting .818 with 9 kills and zero attack errors as well as 4 blocks.
Did we ever say how much we love our fans? We get a ton of input on the website, and we so appreciate it when fans give us a heads up on upcoming important games, team milestones, player related achievements, records, and other items as well as missing game scores, injuries, and insights. It’s all part of being a community website where our fans have a say in what content we publish through the website and on social media channels.
The other thing we always see in our fans is passion. Passion for their child or the player they root for, passion for themselves as players, and passion for their team as Coaches. Sometimes that passion spills over into colorful language, expletives and barrages of personal insights into our grooming routines or referring to us as various human or animal orifices. And that’s OK. We understand.
We have created many new friendships with players, coaches and fans of D3 volleyball. And a short list of individuals who we continue try to convince on a regular basis that we are the good guys.
We recently received this item in our feedback section:
1 – Very Bad
How could we improve?
You are terrible at creating stats. You are a grown man who really doesn’t know anything and just feels the need to attack young 20-year-old volleyball players. That’s embarrassing. Nice job copying and pasting your stats!
We stride to be self-reflective and open to feedback. And we realize this is a one-off comment from one of 5k fans that visit each week. It’s one thing if your team is ranked 9th in our rating and you think they should be 4th. But insinuating that we are attacking young men who play college volleyball? Help us figure this one out…
Our whole ethos is to present our D3 volleyball players as heroes. We highlight players names each night in our blogs that have done amazing things in the court. And we present facts through statistics and math without the favoritism or unbiased approaches of other websites. And thank goodness we live in a technology age where don’t have to copy and paste stats. But we encourage any and all fans who think this feedback has merit, to contact us for a conversation through insidehitter@gmail.com or IG. And thanks to all of our fans who value D3 Men’s Volleyball and support our vision for IH.