Pride split tri-match day at St. Ambrose

DAVENPORT, Iowa - Playing in their first non-conference matches since Feb. 7, the Clarke University men's volleyball team suffered a 3-0 loss to NAIA ranked No. 2 Saint Xavier University on their first match of the day before pulling out their second five-set victory in as many days in a 3-2 win over St. Ambrose University on their home floor on Saturday afternoon.

In both teams' second match of the day, the Fighting Bees were able to jump out to an early lead, winning the first set 25-21 over the Pride before CU was dominant in the second set to a 25-13 win before taking the lead in the match after a 25-20 third set but SAU stayed alive taking the fourth to extra points and winning 26-24 as Clarke would pull out the win 15-12 in the fifth after grabbing leads of 4-1, 8-4, and 10-5 to pull away for the win.

Again playing a strong offensive match following their second-best attacking night on Friday against Graceland, CU would hit for a .319 team attack percentage with just 18 errors on 119 swings with 56 kills compared to St. Ambrose hitting .186 with 31 errors on 140 total attempts.

Three members of the Pride finished with double digit kills led by the second-straight day with 20 kills in a match for Justin Hernandez as the senior from Clinton, Utah had 20 kills on 31 attempts with just four errors for a .516 hitting percentage as he added two aces and was in on seven block assists for a 25.5-point match to lead all players by a significant margin.

Tanner May and Eduardo Hernandez both finished with 10 or more kills as well as May had 14 kills and six errors on 26 swings for a .308 hitting percentage as he finished with four block assist and Eduardo Hernandez had a near double-double effort with 10 kills and eight digs while finishing with a .269 hitting percentage.

Sharing setting responsibilities for a majority of the match, Benjamin Reiser and Kainoa Gerard both had over 20 assists as Reiser had 26 and Gerard had 21 with Reiser adding four kills on four attempts and Gerard adding a pair of digs while Jason Romero had a career-high 10 digs a day after setting his previous career-high with nine at Graceland.

Three members of the SAU attack also had strong matches led by a pair of 11-kill efforts from Kam Dixon's .529 hitting percentage with Cael Anderson having more errors and attempts for a .240 hitting percentage while Michael Bos finished with 10 kills on 13 attempts and a .692 hitting percentage.

In Clarke's first match of the day, Saint Xavier showed their might winning the sets 25-12, 25-13, and 25-18 while hitting at .360 or better in each set to finish the match at a .459 team hitting percentage.

Caydann Cox led the Cougars with 13 kills and just one error on 21 attempts for a .571 hitting percentage with Kegan Olig adding nine kills and seven other members of the SXU attack having at least three or more kills.

Both Eduardo and Justin Hernandez finished with five kills as the only Clarke players with multiple kills on the day while they each combined for five digs and Eduardo Hernandez added a block assist.

Pride men's volleyball will play another match on the road to finish out this long road streak of games when they travel to Oskaloosa, Iowa on Tuesday, Mar. 18 to take on William Penn University with a 7:00 p.m. CT scheduled first serve.