BYU’s Ben Patch Records 1000th Career Kill in Full Return From Injury

BYU junior All-American Ben Patch made a cameo appearance in his team’s Friday night win over Long Beach State, but it wasn’t until Saturday that he had a significant impact on his team’s performance.

Albeit in a 3-0 loss, Patch played 2 sets in his first significant action since February 4th. He 12 full games, and most of a 13th, with a groin injury – a run that didn’t see a single LBSU loss.

In the return, Patch had 7 kills and 2 errors on 11 attacks for a .455 hitting percentage. He also added 4 digs and 2 block assists, though he had 3 service errors and 1 block error, resulting in 8 total points.

Those 7 kills pushed Patch up to 1001 in his career, making him just the 7th Cougar to hit that plateau in the rally-scoring era (since 2001). He should at least jump Jonathan Alleman for 6th on BYU’s career list, just 12 bak, and has a shot at Joaquin Acosta’s 1,088 this season if BYU makes a deep run into the MPSF tournament.

If healthy during his senior year, Patch would be on pace to jump all the way to 2nd on that ranking, behind only Taylor Sander’s 1,743.

Ryan Millar leads all players in program history, recordin 1,797 kills in the side-out scoring era.

BYU will finish their regular season with a pair of road games against UCSB on April 6th and 7th. They then will play host in the opening round of the MPSF tournament, likely as the #2 seed against either Stanford or Pepperdine.

BYU’s Kills Leaders (Rally Scoring Era)