ST. DAVIDS, Pa.– An injury late in the week forced Eastern University Men's Volleyball to reshuffle line-ups going into Saturday' home tri-match against the Marymount University Saints and the Elmira College Soaring Eagles. Facing a pair of quality opponents, the short-handed Eagles battled. Eastern fell to Marymount in three tight sets and won the opening two sets against Elmira before falling in three sets.
Justin Flor had 24 kills to pace the Eagles.
In Eastern's second match of the day, the Eagles squared up against an Elmira squad with several international players. The Soaring Eagles won 17 games in 2022. Eastern won four of the final six points to claim the opening set 25-23. The Eagles led 22-19 in the second set, but needed to score three of the final four points to close out the set. Max Bagilio had the final two kills to put the Eagles up two sets.
With all seven players going the distance, the Eagles had breakdowns in execution against the deeper Elmira squad in the third and the fourth set. Even tiring, the Eastern group found a rally late in the fourth. Elmira was up 20-11, but Flor served six points in a row to pull the Eagles back in the game at 20-18. Elmira won the set 25-20, but the late rally gave the Eastern team some momentum heading into the fifth.
The two sides battled through the early part of the fifth, and the score stood knotted at 11 before the Soaring Eagles closed out the match with the final four points.
Jeremiah Pha had 13 kills and Flor added 12. Chris MIller had 37 assists.
"I am proud of the way the guys competed," Head Coach
Harry Bitzberger said after the match. "Losing Josiah for the day had us moving guys into different positions without a lot of repetitions. I thought Chris did a good job running offense and Jeremiah gave us good energy as a hitter. Even without our full line-up we stood our ground against a couple quality opponents today."
The Eagles fell 25-20, 25-17, 25-21 in the opening match against Marymount. The Saints were an NCAA Tournament team and came into today's game after playing tough matches against the two top teams in the MAC. Eastern actually finished the match with two more kills than the Saints, but Marymount's big block was the difference in the game. The Saints scored 11 points on blocks and kept the Eastern hitters from finding the floor with several soft blocks.
The Eagles will host Neumann University on Tuesday and Elizabethtown College on Thursday.
