The regular season ended with a flourish in the MIVA on Saturday as three teams — Ball State, Loyola Chicago and Ohio State — tied for first, the first time that’s happened since 1996. The MIVA Tournament is set in a league where three other teams tied for fourth.
Third-ranked Penn State won the EIVA regular-season title, staying three games ahead of surging Princeton with a handful of matches left next weekend.
Top-ranked Hawai’i and No. 4 Long Beach State stayed tied atop the conference as they swept their respective Big West matches.
And in the MPSF, No. 2 UCLA rolled on, but the battle for second place muddled as No. 8 Pepperdine bounced back and No. 9 Stanford knocked off No. 5 Grand Canyon for the second day in a row.
There is no NCAA Division I-II men’s volleyball again until Thursday.
MIVA: The tournament is set. Ball State (11-3) will be the No. 1 seed, winning the three-way tiebreaker against Loyola Chicago (11-3) and Ohio State (11-3). No. 2 Loyola won the subsequent tiebreaker against No. 3 Ohio State. Lewis (7-7) won the tiebreaker against Purdue Fort Wayne (7-7) and Lindenwood (7-7) to earn the No. 4 seed and the final first-round home match. The No. 5 Mastodons won the next tiebreaker against No. 6 Lindenwood. No. 7 McKendree (1-13) won the tiebreaker against No. 8 Quincy (1-13). The tournament starts at the home sites Saturday.
In Ohio State’s 29-27, 28-26, 25-23 sweep of visiting Loyola, the Buckeyes had four fewer kills (40-36). Five players had five or more kills, nine each by Shane Wetzel and Jacob Pasteur. Parker Van Buren had 18 kills for Loyola .
Ball State had a much easier time of it as the Cardinals swept visiting PFW 25-17, 25-17, 25-22. Kaleb Jenness had 15 kills. Jon Diedrich and Mark Frazier had 10 each for the Mastodons .
Lewis won in four at Quincy as Christian Prayer had 19 kills and Max Roquet 13, and Lindenwood beat visiting McKendree in four as Ian Schuller had 17 kills. Kyle Wilson had 17 for McKendree.
EIVA: Penn State (22-3, 8-0) won its third EIVA title in a row by sweeping for the second straight day at George Mason (10-14, 2-6). As a result the Nittany Lions will be the host for the EIVA Tournament that starts April 19. Penn State still has two regular-season matches left, next weekend at Charleston. Against Mason, Cal Fisher led with 14 kills and hit .591 after having one error in 22 attacks. Michal Kowal had 13 kills and hit .440.
Princeton (12-11, 6-3) won again at No….
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