Pride pull off reverse sweep for road win at Graceland

LAMONI, Iowa - In their second Heart of America Athletic Conference rematch of the week, the Clarke University men's volleyball team earned their second win over Graceland University on Friday night in a 3-2 win in five sets on the road.

The Yellowjackets were able to pull out a pair of very close sets in the first and second to 29-27 and 25-23 wins to be a set away from a sweep but they would go on to struggle with errors in the next two sets accompanied by a nearly blemish-free fourth set from CU to give the Pride 25-13 and 25-9 set wins and force a fifth set where Clarke would come out on top by the minimum at 15-13.

Clarke would finish with their second best team hitting percentage at .301 as they also only had one error in the second set for a .458 with the match finishing at 49 kills on 113 swings with 15 errors for that .301 ad they added a strong 17 total blocks on the night.

For the second time this season, senior Justin Hernandez hit the 20-kill mark in a match as he set a new career-high with a 26-kill performance on 46 attempts with just five errors for his third-best hitting percentage of the season at .457 as those 26 kills ties the eighth-best kill total in a five set match in program history.

Hernandez served a quality primary target for sophomore setter Benjamin Reiser as the Munich, Germany native had his second-best assist total on the season with 34 while setting a new career-high himself with a 10-dig performance for his first career double-double at Clarke.

Eduardo Hernandez (8), Paulo Simon (5), and Trey Vescoso (4) added supporting offense for the Pride while Jason Romero had a nine-dig performance on the back row for CU with Justin Hernandez adding eight digs and four blocks to finish at 30 of the 68 points score for the Pride, and Simon being in on six total blocks in the match to be the second-highest point scorer for Clarke at 11.

The top three kill leaders for Graceland all had hitting percentages under .100 as Elijah Kline led the Yellowjackets with 16 kills but also had 12 errors with Andrew Cziep also finishing with 12 errors to his 10 kills for a -.054 hitting percentage while Andrew Yousseff had eight kills and eight errors on the night.

Clarke men's volleyball will dip into the non-conference waters on Saturday when they travel to Davenport, Iowa for a neutral court match against NAIA No. 2 Saint Xavier University at 1:00 p.m. CT followed by a rematch with St. Ambrose University at 3:00 p.m. CT.