Men's Volleyball Splits Weekend Contests, Remains in Second in EIVA

This weekend the Harvard men’s volleyball team may have hit the midpoint of its conference season, but a laundry list of questions remains unanswered.

Foremost among the questions: Coming off a weekend of domination against George Mason, did the Crimson have enough momentum make a push for the EIVA title?

At least for another seven days, that doubt remains. By splitting a weekend slate against Princeton (2-8, 2-3 EIVA) and NJIT (2-10, 2-2), Harvard (7-6, 4-2) maintained a hold on second place but failed to gain ground on league-leading Penn State.

“The top is in sight for us,” captain Branden Clemens said. “We definitely do have work to do. We need to alter our work ethic and our mentality…to be more intense, I think. That’ll help us reach the top.”

NJIT 3, HARVARD 2

This Saturday afternoon in Newark, N.J., the Crimson led and led until it didn’t.

Up two sets to one in the game score, Harvard allowed the Highlanders to force a fifth set; up 3-0 in that tiebreaker, the Crimson watched as NJIT mounted a comeback.

Ultimately the contest ended when the Highlanders strung together a 9-2 run, earning the set win, 15-9, and handing Harvard a five-set defeat.

Clemens led his side in kills (19), digs (11), and blocks (7). Junior outside hitter Casey White and sophomore outside hitter Brad Gretsch also posted double-digit finish totals, with 12 and 11, respectively.

“Saturday was the first game where I felt like we weren’t as super high-energy as normal,” Clemens said. “It definitely wasn’t our most crisp weekend.”

Harvard took early control in the afternoon, winning two of the first three games. The third frame was the most dominant: after claiming two of the first three points, the Crimson never trailed, finishing with a 25-19 victory.

But NJIT battled back to win the fourth and fifth sets—both after closing an early gap. Down 2-1, for example, the Highlanders faced an 11-7 deficit before mounting a comeback. With the score tied at 18-18, NJIT won four consecutive points and pushed ahead for the 25-20 set.

On an afternoon when neither team hit above .240, both sides showed signs of sloppy play throughout the match. Notably, in the first frame, the Highlanders racked up more errors than kills in a 25-22 game defeat.

In fact, the only game in which both teams hit above .200 was the second, when NJIT used a pair of mid-set 4-0 stretches to take control in a 25-22 win.

“We’re at the midpoint of the season, roughly,” senior outside hitter Alec Schlossman said. “We’re playing well, but we want to be playing our best volleyball in April when we go to conference playoffs.”

HARVARD 3, PRINCETON 0

Dillon Gym in Princeton, N.J. is typically a tough place to play. The Tigers have posted an above-.500 winning percentage in EIVA play in the past four seasons, and Harvard has lost two of its last three road contests against Princeton.

But last Friday night, the Crimson shook off recent history and a slow start to drop the two-win Tigers in three sets.

“Playing Princeton is a very big game for us because they’re the only other Ivy League team that has men’s volleyball,” Schlossman said. “That was a big emotional win on Friday.”

Most of the drama was concentrated in the first game, when the Tigers fended off a pair of game points to force a tiebreak.

Four times Harvard took a one-point lead; four times Princeton repelled the effort. It was only at 29-28 that an attack error by the Tigers’ Kendall Ratter concluded the set.

By the third frame, the back-and-forth competition had ended. The Crimson won the first three points of the game, took a 12-4 lead, and glided to a 25-20 win.

Clemens totaled 16 finishes in three sets, and sophomores Gretsch and Riley Moore added eight apiece. Overall the team hit .418, led by the .556 rate posted by freshman middle blocker Trevor Dow.

A turning point came midway through the second frame, when a 5-2 Harvard run negated an early Princeton lead. The two teams proceeded to trade points before a kill by sophomore setter Marko Kostich claimed the set for the Crimson, 25-21.

“The takeaway from the weekend is, we really did some things well but still have a lot to work on,” Clemens said. “Hopefully [we’ll] become more consistent.”

—Staff writer Sam Danello can be reached at sam.danello@thecrimson.com