Pride bounce back with road Heart win over Kansas Wesleyan

SALINA, Kan. - Hitting the road for their first full weekend away from Dubuque in exactly a month, the Clarke University men's volleyball team opened their road trip with a 3-2 victory over Kansas Wesleyan University on Friday night. 

The Pride were able to limit their attacking errors in the match, finishing a set with no more than four points being given to KWU on CU attacks for final set scores of 13-25, 25-17, 25-16, 17-25, and 15-10.

With each set being won by a margin of five or more points, mid-set runs would end up making the difference in each frame including a fifth set 5-1 run that put a 9-8 Pride lead to 14-9 behind the serve of Trey Vescoso, who started the run with a kill to head to the service line for four-straight points.

Vescoso was the led Clarke in kills with 13 as the sophomore from Naperville, Ill. was the only member of the Pride in double figures compared to the combination of Kaleb Cui and Connor Williams both over 10 kills at 15 and 11 respectively.

The difference on the attack between the two Heart foes came in the support behind the top attacker on each team as behind Cui's 15, the rest of the Coyotes only finished with 27 kills, even with the 11 from Williams, while the rest of the Pride behind Vescoso finished at 36 kills as the difference in attacking percentage was significant at a .264 for CU and a .154 for Kansas Wesleyan.

That supporting attack from Clarke started in the middle with eight kills from Tanner May and a career-high seven kills and seven block assists from Kyle Scott, who didn't play in every set, but still had the third-most kills on the team and 10.5 points scored in the match.

Along with May and Scott's performance in the middle, the Pride got at least 3.5 or more points scored from six other members of the team including Eduardo Hernandez, Lachlan Donnelly, Benjamin Reiser, Micah Dancy, Nolan Amdur, and Dustin Kuner as Reiser finished with 40 assists and nine digs along with his scoring while Amdur and Donnelly each added seven digs apiece.

Clarke men's volleyball will remain on the road for one more match when they take a mini break from Heart play to face Avila University in Kansas City, Mo. on Saturday, Mar. 21 for a 12:00 p.m. CT scheduled first serve.