Men’s Volleyball sweeps Pfeiffer
Pfeiffer @ Penn State Recap
The Pfeiffer Falcons, in just their fourth season of Division I volleyball, were outmatched from the beginning of Friday night’s match in Rec Hall, falling to Penn State 25-15, 25-22, 25-18.
This was a homecoming for some of the Pfeiffer team members featuring five players from Pennsylvania. Greg Walker, head coach of the small school from North Carolina with just under 2,000 students, has ties to the Pennsylvania area from his time as head coach of Juniata College as well as the Penn State Women’s club team.
Pressure, however, was evident for Pfeiffer playing the No. 6 team in country, but that wasn’t the only factor for the Falcons, who dropped to 5-2 on the season.
“A lot of it was what do we do on our side of the net. Penn State wasn’t necessarily serving harder than we see in the practice gym or in our conference because there’s better serving teams than us in our own conference,” said Coach Walker.
For the Nittany Lions, this was nothing more than another home game as they tried to notch the fifth win in five consecutive home games with three remaining.
“Tonight was one of those matches with two totally different rhythm teams. Game 1 we went out to that lead and coasted a little bit, but we got sucked into trying to do a little more than we needed to do,” said Penn State head coach Mark Pavlik. “Game 2 I thought we started to get sucked in by their rhythm and everything. We started to stand around and just let them believe that they could play with us to 15 and once you let a team believe they can score some points, they become dangerous.”
The usual threat of scoring didn’t come from Aaron Russell, Peter Russell, or Tom Comfort like all season, but more from a different threat all season: the bench. Junior outside hitter Scott Kegerris and sophomore outside hitter Nick Goodell led Penn State in scoring with 12 and 10 points respectively.
The bench totaled 32.5 total points almost outscoring the entire Pfeiffer team with 37.
“I think anytime we can get guys experience feeling something other than what they feel in practice, then we’re going to do that,” said Pavlik, whose Nittany Lions improved to 7-1 on the season. Taylor Hammond provided the Nittany Lions with all 37 assists except for one chipped in by Connor Curry.
For the unusual stars tonight for Penn State, Kegerris seemed to enjoy the moment in the spotlight.
“It’s a totally different atmosphere. Somebody in the crowd was calling me Scotty Locks, which wasn’t bad I guess, it’s kind of cool, but it makes it more tough to play, but it’s definitely more fun,” he said.
Penn State will take on Mount Olive tomorrow night at 7:00 back at Rec Hall.
Ryan Stevens is a freshman majoring in telecommunications. To contact him, e-mail rvs5276@psu.edu.