Athlete of the Week: Clemens Notches Double-Digit Kills in Two Weekend Contests in Springfield

­This weekend, Harvard captain Branden Clemens may not have won a championship with the Crimson men’s volleyball team, but he did just about everything else.

On Friday he outdid all players with 18 kills en route to the team’s 3-1 victory over Puerto Rico Mayaguez. The next night, he outdid even himself with a career-high 23 finishes. His previous career best was 19.

Although Harvard lost the second match, 3-2, after a 15-13 tiebreaker, Clemens ended the weekend tournament with 48 points. He committed just nine errors and added six blocks.

“I think that [our hunger] could be a good thing heading into this coming weekend,” Clemens said. “It might be better [to lose now] because this weekend’s performance might make us practice a little harder and make us realize that we still have work to do.”

That hunger was clearly seen in both matches this weekend, beginning with the opener against the Bulldogs. After falling behind a set, Harvard fought back to win the final three games.

Clemens played a major role in the middle two frames, recording a total of 12 finishes. At one point in the third, he accounted for three straight points.

“This year the general feeling that I’ve gotten is that we’re a very competitive team that is very high-energy,” Clemens said. “It’s still relatively early in the season.”

But arguably the more impressive performance came the next night, when Clemens led the team back from a two-set deficit against the Pride, who have won three of the last four Division III championships for men’s volleyball.

Despite dropping an exhausting 35-33 first frame and despite losing the second in more lopsided fashion, Harvard came back to win both the third and fourth sets. That surge forced a fifth game, which was tied at 13 before Springfield took the tournament title by winning the next two points.

“Sets three and four, we were able to adjust and handle them easily,” senior outside hitter Alec Schlossman said. “It’s just a matter of putting it together for an entire match.”

The bounce-back by the Crimson after the early deficit paralleled Clemens’ strength in both kills and efficiency. As unusual as Clemens’ 23 finishes were, the more remarkable statistic was his .556 efficiency rate for the contest.

That percentage earned him 26.5 points out of his 36 total attacks; rarely does such a high-volume hitter record finishes at such a high mark.

One blemish on the night was his four service errors, which tied three other teammates for tops on the squad. One of these misses came at the end of the fifth set, allowing the Pride to serve for the match.

“The game last night really came down to serve, serve-receive,” Clemens said. “They have a lot of really good jump-servers. That put a lot of pressure on us. If we can handle those kinds of serves better and step it up a little bit…. I think that we can get out of those sticky situations a little quicker.”

Last season, as a junior, he led the team with 295 finishes and also recorded 170 digs. All told, he is eighth in Harvard history in kills and tied for sixth for service aces, with 686 and 60, respectively.

Next weekend, the Crimson will face another stiff test when it is challenged by conference heavyweights Penn State and St. Francis. Both competitors are ranked in the top 15 nationally, and both beat Harvard at least once last year.

As an all-EIVA first team selection last year, Clemens has experience facing these foes. In two of the four games against the Nittany Lions and the Red Flash in 2015, he finished with double-doubles. He has recorded six such performances over the course of his career.