NORTH ANDOVER, Mass. — No. 7 BYU men’s volleyball picked up a dominant 3-0 (25-11, 25-17, 25-17) win over the Merrimack Warriors Monday night.
The Cougars have now moved to 9-2 this season, their only losses to No. 5 UC Irvine, with five straight victories since, all sweeps, all on the road.
With Monday’s matchup being the Cougars’ third in four days, and getting out to some comfortable leads, BYU was able to rotate a number of players into the match. As a result, the Cougars’ individual statistics were spread out fairly evenly.
Teilon-Jonathan Tufuga led BYU with eight kills on 11 swings. In his past two matches, Tufuga has racked up 20 kills on 26 attempts, with no errors. Tufuga also had three aces in the match, now having racked up three or more aces in three straight matches.
Trevor Herget had six kills, Trent Moser had five, Max Philippe had four and four others had two or more.
Tyler Herget had 16 assists in two sets. Kyle Zediker had eight assists in the third set.
Bernardo Adam had a team-high eight digs in two sets.
The Cougars hit .388 and held the Warriors to .133 in the match.
Set 1
The Cougars jumped out to a 5-1 lead to start the match. Merrimack came back to make it 6-3 before a kill by Moser off of a long rally made it 7-3 for BYU.
BYU got to 10-5 on a booming kill from Tufuga.
The Cougars furthered their lead with three blocks within four points to make the score 16-8, with Moser, Gavin Chambers and Philippe in on the blocks.
The first set ended at 25-11 for BYU, the Cougars maintaining a comfortable lead throughout.
Moser racked up five kills to lead BYU early. The Cougars hit .407 and held the Warriors to -.034.
Set 2
BYU made a couple substitutions going into the second set, Trevor Herget and Adam entering the match.
Trevor Herget picked up the first point of the set on a kill, and the score would stay closer early in the second set than it was in the first, BYU still maintaining a two-point cushion before eventually widening the lead to 12-7 on another powerful Tufuga kill and then 13-7 on a Merrimack attack error.
A block by Chambers and Oldani stretched the lead to 16-8.
BYU went up 20-11, but then the Cougars and Warriors would trade a few points before BYU eventually wrapped up a 25-17 set victory.
Set 3
The Warriors picked up their first lead of the match, going up 2-0 in the third set.
The Cougars fought back to make it 5-5 on a Tufuga kill that was set up by a no-look pass from Zediker.
Two consecutive aces and a back-row kill from Tufuga made it 10-7 BYU.
Merrimack fought back to get to 16-15, but a Trevor Herget kill ended a push from the Warriors.
Kills by Philippe, Cole Hauser and Ian Little eventually helped the Cougars wrap up the match with the 25-17 win in the third set.
Up Next
The Cougars return home for two matches at the Smith Fieldhouse against Menlo College to open MPSF conference play. Matches are at 7 p.m. both Friday and Saturday and can be viewed live on Big Ten Plus.