March 15, 2019 - The first three matches of the CUC men's volleyball home schedule have not been what the Cougars were hoping for, but head coach Rhyen Staley and the team will look to turn things around with three more matches on this current home stand, beginning with Saturday's 1 p.m. match against the Illinois Institute of Technology. 

Back on Feb. 16, the Scarlet Hawks defeated the Cougars at IIT's Keating Sports Center in three sets. Matthew Geiser (15 kills, .312) and Brian Perez (7 kills, 417) had strong performances that day, but a big imbalance in hitting errors made the difference. Two of the three sets in the February match were settled by scores of 27-25 and 25-23, and Staley spoke after last week's match against Concordia Wisconsin about the ongoing process of his mostly freshmen team learning how to close out sets in which they have a late lead. 

Concordia-Chicago (4-14, 0-9 NACC) has seen some good individual performances on this home stand and will hope for more of them to "click" at the same time. Last Saturday against CUW, Perez (15 kills, .357) amd Anthony Galindo (11 kills, .444) powered the Cougars' attack. On Wednesday against #5 Benedictine, Skylar Versendaal with eight kills and a .353 while Nick Capers paced the attack with 10 kills versus Aurora on Thursday.

Illinois Tech (3-13, 1-8 NACC), who will play Friday night at North Park before coming to CUC Saturday, has also struggled this season, but they picked up a win earlier this week at Maranatha Baptist in three sets. The trio of Mihailo Djuric, Andriy Bench and Easton Kays had a collective attack percentage of .543 (37-5-59).