Men's Volleyball Falls in Morgan Classic Final

For the Harvard men’s volleyball team, the Morgan Classic is an annual diagnostic—a two-game tournament that precedes EIVA conference play and tests the team’s readiness.

This season the Morgan Classic was also a test of patience. Inconvenienced by winter break and further inconvenienced by a late-January snowstorm that knocked out a matchup against Alderson Broaddus, the Crimson entered this weekend’s competition not having played a match in three weeks.

So was Harvard rusty or well-rested? The answer, after two games, was a little bit of both. Despite making the championship after a win over Puerto Rico Mayaguez, the Crimson (3-1) ultimately fell to hosting Springfield in five sets.

SPRINGFIELD 3, HARVARD 2

It had taken more tan two hours and 40 minutes to reach this point, but here it was: Captain and outside hitter Branden Clemens stepped to the line with the ball in his hands and the score tied at 13 in the fifth set.

A crowd of 1,100 watched as Clemens took off, leapt, and smashed the ball over the heads of his teammates, aiming for a vacant square-foot on the other side of the net.

But the ball never arrived. A service error gave Springfield (10-1) the point, and the hosts took the championship on the next play off a kill by Ricardo Padilla Ayala.

“We’re honestly dissatisfied,” Clemens said. “Not bringing home the trophy was definitely not ideal for us. We wanted to win that. I think it left us a little hungry.”

The drama of the 15-13 ending echoed the drama of the beginning, as the two teams started with a monstrous first frame that included 11 game points. After going into a tiebreak, Harvard had nine chances to take the set by winning a point, but in each case, the Pride rebuffed the effort.

Clemens had nine kills in the frame, part of a night in which he racked up 23 finishes and a game-high hitting efficiency of .556. Padilla Ayala led Springfield with 21 kills, and Greg Woods added 20.

The match appeared all but over by the end of the second game, when the Pride used a 6-2 run to clinch a 25-15 win and a 2-0 set score. But the Crimson clawed back, overcoming an early two-point deficit to take a 25-19 set.

In the fourth frame, Springfield mounted more of a fight and knotted the count at 14. Again, Harvard responded with renewed life—in this case a three-point streak that held up for a 25-21 game victory.

This resilience, and the associated fatigue, set the stage for the final set.

HARVARD, 3, PUERTO RICO MAYAGUEZ 1

This Friday against P.R.-Mayaguez, the end of the beginning truly seemed like the beginning of the end for the Crimson.

Coming off an unusual three-week break, Harvard had shaken off enough rust to take a 19-18 lead in the first set. But the Bulldogs responded by clinching the set with a seven-point run—and begging the question of how out-of-sorts the Crimson really was.

“Our timing was off,” senior outside hitter Alec Schlossman said. “We weren’t quite up to team speed right away. I think we were pretty inconsistent with our play.”

But a different narrative emerged over the next three sets, as Harvard squeezed through the second and dominated in the third and fourth to earn the match.

Clemens topped all players with 18 finishes, maintaining a streak of double-digit kill totals that stretches back to last season. However, defense was a large part of the Crimson’s success, as the team out-blocked P.R.-Mayaguez, 27-10.

Aside from the first set, the tensest moments occurred with the score locked at 24-24 in the second frame. With Harvard sophomore outside hitter Brad Gretsch serving, though, the Bulldogs committed a pair of errors to give away the game.

By contrast the Crimson deployed mid- and late-game runs in the third and fourth frames to cruise to 25-16 and 25-18 wins, respectively.

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