Mustangs clinch GSAC on Senior Day

The Master's men's volleyball team clinched the GSAC regular season championship Saturday as they celebrated the eight players finishing their careers with the Mustangs.

TMU (20-0, 9-0) defeated the Park-Gilbert Buccaneers 25-15, 25-22, 25-13 in The MacArthur Center. But the attention fell to the eight players -- Max McCullough, Carston Saelzler, Braden Van Groningen, Finn Kelly, Will Avera, Isaac Laing, Ian Duncan and Bryce Jones -- who were honored before the match.

"Out of those eight, three of them have been here with our program for four years (Avera, Duncan and Van Groningen), two of them have been with our program for three years (Jones and Kelly), and three of them have been with our program for one year (Laing, McCullough and Saelzler)," said TMU Head Coach Jared Goldberg. "The guys who have been here for four years have really developed the program. They were my first class as a coach that I have been with guys for their entire career. So it's cool to be able to see their development and growth."

That group of 4-year players have gone a combined 79-18 over those four years (.814 win percentage), while the 3-year players are 65-8 (.890).

As for the match against the Buccaneers, the No. 1-ranked Mustangs hit .597, only committing six hitting errors in 62 total attempts, and had the clear advantage in kills (43-23), service aces (9-0) and blocks (6-1).

"Guys went out there and had a lot of fun," Coach Goldberg said. "They enjoyed it and we tried some new things, played some reasonable volleyball too. So they were able to go out on a good note."

Avera finished with 12 kills in 13 attempts while committing no errors for a hitting percentage of .923, a new program record for a single match (with a minimum of 10 attempts). Bryce Jones dished 23 assists with Isaac Laing adding another 19 under his name. Max McCullough collected six of the team's nine aces, with five of those aces coming in the final set. Finn Kelly led the team with six digs.

With the GSAC regular season championship, their second in a row, TMU will earn the No. 1 seed for the conference post-season tournament. That means the Mustangs will host the No. 4 seed on Monday, April 14.

But there is one more match to be played to finish out the regular season. The Master's will travel to Fullerton, Calif. on Wednesday to take on No. 15 Hope International. First serve is scheduled for 6 p.m.