Ball State clinches MIVA tie; Omaha beat Columbus Fury in Pro Volleyball Federation

Ball State swept Quincy on Thursday night and guaranteed the No. 11 Cardinals at least a share of their third MIVA men’s volleyball regular-season title in a row.

In the Pro Volleyball Federation, the Omaha Supernova pulled a little closer to first place with a four-set victory over the Columbus Fury.

Recaps and top performances follow, but first Friday’s schedule, which includes some top-notch men’s matches with top seeding in conference tournaments at stake.

Top-ranked Long Beach State plays host to CSUN in the Big West, where No. 4 Hawai’i is at No. 5 UC Irvine and No. 19 UC San Diego is at UC Santa Barbara. Long Beach is 6-0 and holds a one-game lead on UCI (5-1). Hawai’i is 3-3.

In the MPSF, No. 2 UCLA is home for No. 3 Grand Canyon, No. 6 BYU is at USC, No. 7 Stanford is at Concordia Irvine and No. 8 Pepperdine steps out the league to play The Master’s. Grand Canyon leads the conference at 8-0, a game up on UCLA (7-1). BYU is third at 6-4.

The three EIVA matches show No. 9 Penn State at Charleston, No. 17 Princeton home for NJIT and No. 16 George Mason entertaining Harvard.

The lone match involving a MIVA team has Ohio State playing independent Maryville.

In Conference Carolinas, Mount Olive goes to Emmanuel and Barton is at Erskine.

The NEC has three matches, LIU at Sacred Heart, Saint Francis (PA) at D’Youville and FDU at Merrimack.

Fort Valley State plays an SIAC match at Kentucky State, while the SIAC’s Edward Waters plays Webber International.

The only ECC match has American International at Dominican.

The Pro Volleyball Federation is off until Orlando plays at Grand Rapids on Saturday and we have some news about that.

Want to watch a match? If it’s being shown, we have the viewing link in our VolleyballMag.com TV & Streaming Listings.

NCAA men

Ball State improved to 19-9 overall, 12-3 in the MIVA, with a 25-23, 25-17, 25-15 victory over visiting Quincy (5-18, 1-14) to clinch a tie of the regular-season title. The Cardinals can wrap it up with a victory Saturday when McKendree visits and/or a loss by Loyola Chicago (17-9, 11-4) at Lewis. Nine Cardinals had kills as Ball State hit .411. Tinaishe Ndavazocheva led with nine kills and hit .615 after having one error in 13 attacks. He had two aces, two digs and two blocks, one solo. Rodney Wallace had four kills in five errorless swings and three blocks. Quincy, which has lost 17 in a row, got 18 kills from Raje Alleyne, who hit .433 and had an ace, a block and two digs …

Tenth-ranked Ohio State (18-8, 11-5) finished its MIVA schedule with a 18-25, 20-25, 28-26, 25-18, 15-11 victory over visiting No. 18 McKendree (14-10, 8-7). Jacob Pasteur led the Buckeyes with 15 kills, two assists, two aces, nine digs and seven blocks, two solo. Shane Wetzel had 11 kills. McKendree’s Bryce Wetjen had 21 kills and Kevin Schuele 17 … 

Purdue Fort Wayne (13-11, 7-8), back in the AVCA Poll this week at No. 20, dealt a 2-hour, 50-minute five-set loss to No. 14 Lewis (15-13, 8-7), winning a wild one 25-19, 25-21, 30-32, 19-25, 16-14. Mark Frazier tied his PFW career-high with 24 kills, hitting .354 to go with the four assists, an ace, a block and nine digs. Jon Diedrich had 23 kills, two assists, two aces, nine digs and six blocks, onee solo. Casey Lyons had five kills with no errors in 10 attacks, an ace, a dig and six blocks. The Mastodons, who hit .309 and setter Andrej Polomac had 56 assists, two kills in three errorless tries, three aces, two blocks and nine digs. Max Roquet led four Lewis players with 10 or more kills with 20 as he hit .326 and had a block and 10 digs. Syver Droslum had 16 kills, an assist, a block and 11 digs. Daniel Haber had 12 kills, five digs and seven blocks and Shawn Baggs had 10 kills with one error in 14 swings to go with an ace, four digs and nine blocks … 

Also in the MIVA, Lindenwood (12-11, 8-7) swept at Queens (9-18. 2-13) as AJ Lewis had 15 kills and Clay Wieter 10 …

In non-conference matches, Daeman (15-6) of the NEC swept at the ECC’s Roberts Wesleyan (7-14) as eight players had kills, seven by Cameron Milligan … independent Maryville (21-5) won in five at the SIAC’s Central State (6-25) as Makai Scott led a balanced attack with 13 kills, hitting .400, to go with four assists, nine digs and a block.

Pro Volleyball Federation

BETTY LEADS OMAHA: Bethania De La Cruz went off for 26 kills for the second straight match as the Omaha Supernova defeated the visiting Columbus Fury 25-20, 25-22, 21-25, 25-22.

Omaha improved to 11-5 and iis one game back of first-place Atlanta (12-4). Grand Rapids is third at 6-7, followed closely by Orlando (6-8) and Columbus, which dropped to 5-8 with its third loss in a row.

San Diego is 4-7 and Vegas is 5-10.

De La Cruz had two errors in 41 attacks as the Dominican Olympian hit .585 to go with 14 digs and a block assist. Nia Reed had 16 kills, an assist, nine digs and four blocks, one solo. Brooke Nuneviller had 14 kills, 16 digs and three blocks, two solo. Natalia Valentin-Anderson had 57 assists, an ace, four digs, two kills and two blocks, one solo.

The Fury got 17 kills apiece from Reagan Cooper and Megan Courtney Lush, who had 13 digs and two block assists. Cooper had three digs and a block assist.

SUNDERLAND, MCPEAK ON BOARD: The Pro Volleyball Federation hired a big-time announcing crew for its matches that will be shown on the CBS Sports Network. VolleyballMag’s Larry Hamel reporting:

The PVF and TV partner CBS Sports Network hit the jackpot with Paul Sunderland and Holly McPeak as announcers for the league’s upcoming cable matches. The veteran Sunderland is the gold standard of volleyball play-by-play voices. McPeak has done stellar work as an analyst of college indoor and beach volleyball.

Having “Sundy” and Holly on the call for the PVF’s national-TV offerings on CBSSN brings instant credibility and proven professionalism to the telecasts. Sunderland will again call the men’s and women’s indoor Olympics this summer with partner Kevin Barnett and McPeak has been an ESPN/ABC analyst for the NCAA women’s national semifinals and final.

The initial PVF match on the third-tier cable channel airs Saturday night (7 p.m. Eastern) when the Orlando Valkyries plays at the Grand Rapids Rise. It faces stiff competition from the NCAA men’s basketball Final Four, but the sledding gets easier for the seven regular-season national-TV matches to follow.

The Pro Volleyball Federation YouTube channel has been the sole source of streaming matches during the inaugural 2024 season and the Valkyries-Rise on Saturday night is not listed among its offerings, so linear cable CBSSN appears to have exclusivity for its televised matches.

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