Friday night sweep over Pacific

PROVO, Utah – The No. 2 BYU men’s volleyball team earned its fifth sweep of the season on Friday night after a 3-0 (25-20, 25-20, 25-15) victory over the visiting Pacific Tigers.

Ben Patch led all players with 13 kills and a .417 attack. Josue Rivera and Taylor Sander each added five kills to the winning effort, and Sander also added three aces.

"I was glad we finished the way we did," said BYU head coach Chris McGown. "I didn’t think we started with very much energy. We were content to let them make mistakes rather than us go score points. I was glad to see that we finished strong. We had a really nice third set and we actually had one of our better passing nights. We’ve been working on that, so it’s nice to see that coming around a little bit."

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The Cougars hit .265 as a team compared to .133 from the Tigers.

After a couple errors from Pacific, BYU took an early 3-1 lead in set one but the Tigers fought their way back in it. The set tied up at 3s, 4s, 5s, and 6s before it was Pacific’s turn to take the lead at 8-6. This time the Cougars fought back, tying the score at 9-9. The teams traded points from there until a Sander kill sparked BYU on a 5-0 run to give them a 20-15 advantage and the eventual 25-20 set victory.

The teams exchanged points for much of the second set, until a 4-0 run in BYU’s favor gave the home team a 14-10 lead. The Cougars wouldn’t relinquish the lead through the set and took the 25-20 set victory for a 2-0 lead in the match.

Through two sets, Patch was leading all players with 10 kills and a .400 attack.

BYU took the lead right away in set three, going up 5-2 after an ace from Patch and reaching its largest lead of the match at 22-12. The Cougars took the dominating 25-15 set victory and finished the sweep. 

"Stanford’s going to be a much different team tomorrow and they’re going to really, really bring it," McGown said. "We’re just going to try and refocus our energy and get some good rest tonight, and see if we can be better tomorrow."

The Cougars play again at home tomorrow night at 7 p.m. MST, hosting No. 5 Stanford. The match will be broadcast live on BYUtv.