The Master's men's volleyball team are heading to the GSAC Championship match after a 3-set victory over No. 4-seed OUAZ Monday night in The MacArthur Center.
The Mustangs, ranked No. 1 in the NAIA, are now 22-0. Monday's win marks the 14th time the team has won in three sets in their 22 matches this season. Only twice has the team seen five sets and six times won in four.
"We took care of business," said TMU Head Coach
Jared Goldberg. "We had a really good first two-and-a-half sets. The second half of the third set wasn't quite as clean, but we were able to finish it out."
In the first set, TMU was either tied or had a slim lead in the early going. But after the Spirit tied it at 6-6, The Master's went on a 5-0 run to grab the momentum. They rode that 5-point edge until the very end, winning four of the final six points, to take a 7-point set win.
The second set was different in that the Mustangs jumped out early and maintained their lead. A 4-0 run put TMU up 10-3, once again riding that lead until winning the final three of four points to take the second set by 10 points.
After three different runs put the Mustangs up 17-11 in the third, the Spirit came back on an 8-5 run to get to within three. But once again The Master's grabbed three of the final four points, highlighted by a pair of
Max McCullough kills, to take the set and the match for the Mustangs.
Braden Van Groningen, honored in front of the home crowd as the GSAC Player of the Year before the start of Monday's semifinal, finished with a match-high 13 kills and hit .571.
Isaac Seltzer had 10 kills with McCullough finishing with 8 and
Trace Oswald, the GSAC Freshman of the Year, getting seven.
Matthew Hamm dished 33 assists.
"There's a level of consistency that has been pretty good so far this season that is very difficult for college men to achieve on a day-to-day," Goldberg said. "So we've done well on that so far, but the biggest challenge is the next game."
That next game will be for the GSAC Tournament Championship which will be against Hope International, the No. 3 seed in the tournament that knocked over Benedictine Mesa Monday night in Mesa, Ariz. The match against the Royals will start at 6 p.m.
