George Mason gave Penn State all it could handle, but the Nittany Lions won in four and will play Princeton in the EIVA Championship Tournament final.
The MPSF title match is set as Stanford knocked out BYU in five and UCLA swept Grand Canyon.
UC Irvine and UC San Diego won their Big West quarterfinal matches to move into Friday’s semifinals, Friday’s SIAC championship match pits Edward Waters against Central State, and Conference Carolinas has its semifinals.
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EIVA
Fourth-seeded George Mason (13-15) saw its season end but not before the Patriots bowed up at top-seeded Penn State (25-3). The Nittany Lions eventually came away with a 19-25, 25-17, 25-22, 25-15 victory that included breaking a 21-21 tie in the third set.
The second seed, Princeton (14-11), advanced with a 25-19, 23-25, 25-14, 25-19 victory sixth-seeded NJIT (9-17) in the other semifinal.
The final is Saturday. Penn State swept both their regular-season meetings in mid-February. Princeton has gone 10-3 since.
Against Mason, Penn State his .381 and had 10 aces with 18 serving errors. Cal Fisher led with 23 kills while hitting .514 and had three aces and four digs. Brett Wildman had 14 kills, hit .500, and had two assists, three aces, two blocks and eight digs. Cole Bogner had 45 assists, two aces, four blocks and four digs, and Ryan Merk had 12 digs and an assist.
Mason, which hit .283 and had four aces and 16 errors, got 17 kills from Liam French. He hit .517 and had two assists, two aces, a block and two digs. Omar Hoyos had 14 kills, an ace, a block and seven digs. Their teammates combined for 10 kills. Georgi Zahariev had two kills in three errorless tries, 32 assists, seven digs and two blocks, one solo. He did not have an ace but had six errors.
Princeton’s Ben Harrington had 16 kills, hit .393 and had two assists, two aces, two blocks and three digs. Owen Mellon had 12 kills, hit .455, and had four blocks and two digs. Brady Wedbush had eight kills and four aces and Nyherowo Omene had six kills with one error in 11 swings and four aces. Henry Wedbush had four kills in five errorless tries, 43 assists, two blocks and four digs.
NJIT hit .146 and had three aces and 13 errors. Alessandro Negri had 13 of his team’s 34 kills. He hit .385 and had an assist and six digs. Carson Williams had six kills with…
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