Men's Volleyball Sinks Fleet, Continues Home Win Streak

After three consecutive losses in California over spring break, the Harvard men’s volleyball team could use some home cooking. Cambridge delivered, as the Crimson (13-7, 6-3 EIVA) won in straight games over Erskine (13-14, 9-6 Carolinas) 25-20, 25-23, 25-19, Saturday afternoon at the Malkin Athletic Center. The win marks the eleventh consecutive home victory for Harvard.

“We lost three in California and we were looking at this match as a way to train for the final playoff run over the next three weeks,” coach Brian Baise said. “So for us it [this game] is an indicator of what we’re doing well and what we need to improve on.”

Sophomore DJ White paced the team with 10 kills on .278 hitting while junior co-captain Nick Madden added eight kills of his own in addition to a game-high six blocks.

The Crimson should certainly be proud of yet another comfortable win at home but the quality of the opposition was less than that which Harvard will face in the upcoming weeks of conference play.

“I thought we did some things really well,” Baise said. “Our serving was for the most part better than it was last week in California and I thought offensively we were pretty strong. Our blocking needs to improve, though our defense in general needs to improve—we gave away a few too many points.”

After a comfortable first set during which the Flying Fleet was unable to find any rhythm the, second set was a much tenser affair.

Tied at 23-23, the game could have gone either way, but the Crimson was saved by two poor handling errors by the opposition.

“I think we were a little bit steadier on offense, we didn’t make quite as many errors,” Baise said. “Other than the second game, our hitters did a real good job of not making unforced errors. Rob Lothman, our center, put the ball where it needed to be. I think that was the key difference, they missed eighteen serves and we missed ten so that helps too.”

In a bizarre turn, especially given Harvard’s fine home form, there was a substantial Erskine presence at the match. The private school from South Carolina is currently competing in its first year as a varsity volleyball program and is comprised of an undergraduate population of only 575. Nevertheless the Flying Fleet’s fanbase—decked out in “Go Erskine, Beat Harvard”—easily eclipsed that of the Crimson.

“[The large Erskine support] was really cool,” freshman hitter Branden Clemens said. “This was their first year and it’s pretty exciting that they can get that many fans out.… I do wish more Harvard people would come, though.”

The fierce Erskine crowd support rallied during the third set behind a Flying Fleet comeback after Harvard jumped out to an 8-4 lead. Suddenly, for the first time in the match, the momentum was all with the men from South Carolina.

But in the end, it was all to no avail, as the Crimson went on a 13-5 run, to put the game to bed.

“We’ve done that a number of times this year,” Baise said. “Where it was tight about halfway through that third game, and we were able to get a little momentum and we were able to stay real focused to make some plays on defense. We made it hard for them to score and any time you put pressure on another team it works to your advantage.”

Despite the win, Harvard will still be disappointed with certain aspects of its game. Serving has been a particular area of weakness for the team of late.

“We’ve struggled with [our serving] a bit,” Baise said. “In California we had a real rough stretch with our serving and we worked a lot at it this week and it was better today than it had been.”

The team made 10 errors and recorded only six aces, improving from 12 and zero, respectively, in its last game against Concordia. This easily outgunned the Fleet, who made a whopping 18 errors with only seven aces, but still falls short of the kind of serving performance that the team will be hoping for as it enters the business end of the season.

“[The] next five games are important for us; next weekend in particular,” Baise said. “[Our serving] will need to be a little better to win those games."