Road stretch for Pride finishes with 3-0 loss to Mount Mercy

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa - Finishing a stretch of five-straight road matches over 10 days, the Clarke University men's volleyball team dropped a three set match to Mount Mercy University in Cedar Rapids, Iowa on Tuesday night.

A tight first set went the way of the home team by a final score of 25-21 with the determining stretch coming after CU led 17-14 before the Mustangs finished the set on a 11-4 run that included a 4-0 run after tying the set at 19-19 to lead 23-19 as MMU would then push ahead to dominant 25-13 and 25-11 wins in the second and third where they led early and never looked back.

By the numbers, the tight first set also included hitting percentages that were nearly identical with Mount Mercy finishing at a .312 hitting percentage at 15 kills, five errors, and 32 total attacks while the Pride hit for a .310 on 12 kills, three errors, and 29 attempts with Clarke progressing in the match to hit -.067 in the second and .158 in the third with only six kills in each set and MMU improving on their hitting percentage to .379 in the second and .579 in the third.

Individually on the attack, the Mustangs had two players with a match-high eight kills in Curdin Acklin and Guglielmo Illotti as three other MMU attackers had four kills, two had three kills, and another pair had two kills as setters Maks Cabajewski and Gustavo Kehl Bauer spread the ball around plenty to their various options.

For the Pride, Tanner May finished with seven kills on nine swings with one of his two non-kills being an error for a .667 hitting percentage while adding a block assist and a dig as fellow middle Dustin Kuner had six kills on 12 swings with two errors for a .333 hitting percentage and Trey Vescoso finished with no errors on 12 swings for a .417 hitting percentage with a five-kill, six dig, one assist night.

Clarke men's volleyball will return to the Kehl Center for their first home match since Feb. 10 when they host Dordt University on Friday, Feb. 27 for a 7:00 p.m. CT scheduled first serve between the Pride and Defenders.