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Pride drop Tuesday home match to William Penn

Pride drop Tuesday home match to William Penn
Box Score
February 18, 2025

DUBUQUE, Iowa - Getting a busy week of matches all in the Kehl Center started on Tuesday night, the Clarke University men's volleyball team dropped a 3-0 match to William Penn University.

Offensive efficiency ended up being the major difference between the Pride and the Statesmen as CU finished each of the three sets with exactly eight hitting errors while finishing with a .074 team hitting percentage as WPU hit .300 as a team to combine for 39 kills and 12 errors on 90 swings.

Clarke had leads early in each set including a 4-0 start to the match in the first and a five-point run in the second to lead 9-6 but the Statesmen would rally back in both instances to seemingly take control at 19-14 in both sets before closing out the sets 25-18 and 25-20.

The third set would be more of a wire-to-wire set win, jumping out 3-0 then 10-4 to eventually grow their lead to a 10-point advantage at 20-10, 22-12, and 23-13 to finish the match at a 25-17 third set win.

Justin Hernandez for the Pride would lead all players in the match with 13 kills on a match-high 33 attempts to be the only member of the CU attack over a .100 hitting percentage at .212 while adding five digs and four total blocks with two solos and two block assists for 16 points.

Anthony Ramirez (6), Eduardo Hernandez (4), Zachary Barr (4), and Michael Pettke (3) all added multiple kills that led to Benjamin Reiser finishing with his career-high 20 assists for the second-straight match while liberos Trey Vescoso and AJ Matsumoto combined for 12 digs with Vescoso producing seven and Matsumoto finishing at five.

Statemen outside hitters Ben Cemeno-Castillo and Josh Bluhm had hitting percentages over .300 with Cemeno-Castillo finishing with a team-high 12 kills then Bluhm tied middle Britten Beallis with seven kills for the second-most on the team.

Clarke men's volleyball will have a day away from match action before starting a stretch of three matches in three days starting with a non-conference title against Judson University on Thursday, Feb. 20 with a 7:00 p.m. CT scheduled opening serve.