CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — The No. 8 BYU men’s volleyball team swept the the No. 20 Lincoln Memorial Railsplitters (25-21, 25-19, 25-19) in the opening match of the Harvard Invitational.
The win moves the Cougars to 7-2 this season, now having won three matches in a row.
The Cougars had a season-high seven aces in the match, led by Teilon-Jonathan Tufuga and Ian Little who had two each.
Tufuga and Trent Moser led the Cougars with 14 and 13 kills, respectively.
BYU had 14 total blocks in the match, led by Gavin Chambers with four.
The Cougars hit .278 in the match and held the Railsplitters to .077.
Set 1
The first set started out very even, with back-and-forth action, neither team grabbing a two-point lead until BYU went ahead 11-9.
The Cougars maintained the lead and got to a 14-11 advantage on a demonstrative block by Moser and Chambers.
The Railsplitters fought back to take a lead 18-17 on a block.
The end of the set remained tight until Little subbed in for the Cougars as a service specialist and fired an ace that dipped just in front of the LMU defenders.
The Railsplitters called a timeout at that point, but the Cougars picked up two of the next three points to win the set 25-21.
The set featured 11 ties and five lead changes
Set 2
The Cougars jumped out to an early 7-3 lead in the second set, fueled by an ace by Tufuga, kill by Moser and block by Moser and Chambers.
After a long video review initiated by an LMU, challenge, BYU went up 11-7.
Just two points later, another lengthy video review took place on another LMU challenge. This time the Railsplitters won the point to get with two points at 11-9.
The Railsplitters would not get within two points again until back-to-back aces from Axel van Baars to make it 19-18 for BYU.
Little closed out the set with an ace.
Set 3
Moser and Oldani combined for 11 kills in the third set as the Cougars maintained a comfortable lead for the majority of the set.
BYU finished the set with an ace, just like in the previous set, Tufuga registering this one.
Next Up
The Cougars face the host Harvard Crimson on Saturday at 5 p.m. Mountain Time. The match will be available to view on ESPN+.