By Gavin Greer
Purdue Fort Wayne’s mens team fell in five sets, 2-3 against #11 ranked Ball Sate last night. Set scores were 20-25, 26-24, 22-25, 25-10 and 8-15.
This matchup was a rematch of last year’s MIVA Championship which saw BSU winning their first MIVA Championship since 2002.
PFW put up another great performance against a ranked opponent this week. Their first ranked opponent this week was Ohio State who the Mastodons played on Thursday.
PFW dominated in kills against BSU. PFW had 61 compared to BSU’s 48. PFW’s Jon Diedrich led all players in kills with 28. This performance tied his career best mark for kills. Bryce Walker and Carlos Mercado added to the teams kills total with Walker having 13 and Mercado scoring nine kills .
Another area that PFW had the edge over BSU in, was assists. The Mastodons had 58 while BSU had 45.
PFW’s Zach Solomon led all players in this stat with 47 assists. The next closest to this total was BSU’s Jakub Wiercinski who had 39.
The only statistic that BSU had the upper hand in was blocks. They had 26 compared to PFW’s five. Wiercinski led all players in this area with 11.
With this win Ball State improved to 7-5 on the season. This win got them back to .500 in MIVA play with a 2-2 conference record. Their next match will be at Lindenwood on Feb. 24.
With the loss PFW suffered their first back-to-back loss of the season and fell to a record of 10-4. They are now 1-3 in MIVA play.
They will look to get back into winning form on Wednesday as they face off against McKendree at 8 p.m. on the road.