Ball State men's volleyball's run ends in Final Four loss to UC Irvine
· Yahoo Sports
Ball State men's volleyball has been one of the final four programs standing 17 different NCAA seasons.
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They still have yet to be a final two.
The No. 4-seeded Cardinals saw its season come to an end Saturday dropping a four-set battle to UC Irvine in the NCAA Tournament semifinals at Pauley Pavilion in Los Angeles. Ball State's season ends with a 26-5 record.
Hitting woes plagued the Cardinals in the first set. After leading the country in hitting percentage all season, Ball State mustered just a .114 attack in the first frame. This allowed the Anteaters to slowly build their lead before winning the set, 25-19.
Ball State found itself in the second set. Led by the MIVA Player of the Year, Patrick Rogers, the Cardinals hit .387 in the set. They took control midway through before holding off a late UCI rally. Will Patterson finished off the set with a kill, giving the Cardinals the 25-23 win and tying the match at one set apiece.
The third set proved to be the most entertaining. It was tied on eight separate occasions, including at 23, 24 and 25. Ball State actually led 25-24 and was on serve to win the set, but Rogers foot faulted on his attempt, awarding a point to UCI. An attacking error then made it 26-25 Anteaters before Andrej Jokanovic slammed home the winning point, 27-25.
Irvine rode the momentum off the third-set win into the fourth. After Ball State scored the first point of the set, they never led the rest of the way. The Cardinals were able to tie it at 11-11, but a 14-8 run from the Anteaters to close the match sealed Ball State's fate.
As a team, UC Irvine (21-8) had a hitting percentage of .362. Jokanovic had 19 kills, Trevor Clark 14, Andreas Brinck 13 and William D'Arcy 12 to power the Anteaters offense. Cameron Kosty had 53 assists for UCI, who advances to its fifth national title game in program history. They are 4-0 in their previous trips.
For Ball State, Rogers was the only player with double-digit kills with 20. Patterson added nine, while freshman Daniel Gunther provided a nice spark off the bench in the third and fourth sets to finish with six kills. The hitting percentage was .234, though, a full .100 lower than their season average. Fourteen service errors also hurt the Cardinals.
Austin Hough is a sports editor within the Center for Community Journalism at USA Today Co., overseeing high school sports and Notre Dame athletics coverage for five Indiana newspapers. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @AustinRHough. Hough can be emailed at [email protected].
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Ball State men's volleyball score, stats in Final 4 loss to UC Irvine