Jan. 8, 2005

Final Stats

HONOLULU, Hawaii--The Lewis University men's volleyball team was a point away from sweeping Penn State and earning its first victory of the season, but the Nittany Lions fought back to win game 3 and then take the next two games to deny the Flyers.

Lewis (0-3) led 30-29 in game 3 and was serving when a recurring nemesis struck the squad--a service error at a critical time. The miscue tied the game at 30-30 and Penn State (1-2) scored three of the next four points to win the game 33-31. The win helped propel them to a 3-2 comeback that saw Lewis fall 36-34, 30-26, 31-33, 17-30, 12-15.

The Flyers overcame a pair of game points in the opening game before pulling out a 36-34 win. The team then coasted to a 30-26 win in game 2. Through the first two games, the Flyers were hitting .465 as a team.

Penn State's defense tightened from the third game on and Lewis hit just .019 for the rest of the match.

Serving mistakes cost the Flyers in the deciding game as well. After tying the game at 12-all following an Enrique Escalante kill, Lewis handed the lead right back with a service error. Penn State registered the final two points of the match and came out with the five-set win.

Jeff Soler paced the team with a match-high 25 kills. He also had seven digs and four blocks. Soler recorded 55 kills, 20 digs and eight blocks in the three-match tournament. For his efforts, he was named to the Outrigger Invitational all-tournament team.

Escalante added 16 kills and a team-high five blocks, while Jared Dayton had 11 kills and Matt Mueller had 10 kills. J.J. Castellano tallied at least 10 digs for the third straight match as he posted a team-high 10.

The Flyers return home and will play their Alumni match on Saturday, Jan. 15. The team gets back to regular-season action Jan. 18 when it opens conference play with a home match against Ball State.