Match Stats
- #2 Ohio St. def. #7 Lewis 3-2 (25-22, 25-23, 23-25, 14-25, 16-14)
- Ohio State moves to 21-1 (10-0 MIVA); Lewis falls to 17-6 (10-3 MIVA)
- Neil Carey Arena, Romeoville, Illinois
- Attendance: 1,218
- Box Score
A dramatic comeback for the home team Lewis University Flyers ended in heartbreak as defending NCAA champions Ohio State needed overtime to win a 5th and decisive set on Saturday in Romeoville.
The win comes in Ohio State head coach Pete Hanson’s 1000th career match. In those 1000 games, Hanson’s record is 666-334: as close as is mathematically possible to winning 2/3 of his games as a head coach. The 4-time national coach off the year is also 290-90 (.763) in his career in the MIVA.
While Ohio State’s historic 42-game winning streak came to an end last week, they do have two other streaks still rolling. They’ve won 20 consecutive true road games (in other words, not neutral site) and have a 25-match MIVA conference winning streak as well.
Ohio State was led by their two standout pin hitters Nicolas Szerszen and Miles Johnson, who both had double digit kills. Szerszen had 18 and 2 aces (he’s the school’s all-time career leader in the latter category) while hitting .333 and digging 11 balls. Miles Johnson chipped in 13, but hit just .073 (10 errors). He atoned for his mistakes with 10 digs and 3 aces.
Maxime Hervoir had 12 for the Buckeyes, and Blake Leeson had an efficient 5 (.455 hitting). Leeson hasn’t played well in the Buckeyes’ last two games, but on Saturday returned to his previous trend of providing key offense out of the middle.
Lewis’ redshirt freshman Ryan Coenen had a monstrous 22 kills (3 errors, 38 attacks, .500 hitting percentage) and also had 8 blocks. His huge performance wasn’t enough to lift his team though, the rest of whom combined to hit .167.
14 of Coenen’s kills came in the last 3 sets, including 5 and an ace in a truncated 5th.
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