The No. 15 Ohio State men’s volleyball team will host No. 14 Ball State tonight at 7 p.m. in St. John Arena. The Cardinals and Buckeyes are ranked No. 1 and No. 2 in the Midwestern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association standings at 4-0 and 4-1, respectively.
“They are good team. They beat Lewis who beat us two weeks ago. They just beat Loyola,” said OSU coach Pete Hanson. “Right now they are undefeated in the conference.”
The Cardinals are on a 9-0 run heading to St. John Arena and are 10-4 for the season. Hanson is concerned about the level of experience on the Ball State team, which is heavy-laden with senior and junior players.
“It’s going to be a tough match for our guys,” Hanson said. “We’ve got to find a better way to play good volleyball than we have the last two nights out.”
OSU lost its last two matches against No. 10 Lewis, 1-3, and Division III No. 2 Juniata, 2-3.
“We’ve kind of been focusing on ourselves these last few days but we’ve studied Ball State and we think we’re pretty prepared for them. We just need to go out and execute,” Hanson said.
He said that their focus has been mostly centered on passing and sideout offense at a steady level. The team needs to play consistently and as a solid unit, Hanson said. In the Lewis game, Ted Schoenfeldt had a career-night, but senior captain Robbie Klein was targeted and did not perform well, while John Klanac had a mediocre performance. Hanson said he believed that in order for the team to be successful, these three, along with the rest of the team, need to be working seamlessly together.
“We don’t need any one guy to be great, but we can’t have any one guy have a bad night either,” Hanson said. “We should be able to collectively beat teams rather than having to worry about one guy being able to go out and beat somebody.”
When the two teams faced each other Dec. 6 in a preseason match, the Buckeyes lost in five games. After tonight’s match they will see each other once more on March 27 in Muncie, Ind.
Molly Gray can be reached at [email protected].