KENOSHA, Wis. – The Carthage College men's volleyball team (23-1, 11-0 Midwest Collegiate Volleyball League), ranked No. 3 in the March 22 AVCA Division III Men's Top 15 Poll, return to Tarble Arena on Thursday, March 24 to battle MSOE (15-7, 10-1 MCVL) for first place in the MCVL. Each teams entered the match with a 10-0 record in the conference.
 
The Red Men took command of the match immediately in the first set as they jumped out to an early 3-0 lead with Matt Reinsel back to serve. A short time later with the score tied 8-8, Carthage made a 5-1 run to take the lead once again, 13-9. The Red Men held onto the lead for the rest of the set and won 25-14.
 
MSOE showed their tenacity to start the second set as they kept the score close and eventually took a 16-14 lead over Carthage. However, the lead wouldn't last long as the Red Men made a three point run thanks to kills by J.P. Tulacka and Griffin Shields, and an attack error by the Raiders. A few points later with the score tied 20-20, Carthage jumped ahead to a 22-20 lead due to two errors by MSOE. The two errors proved to be the Achilles heel of the set for the Raiders as they fell to the Red Men 25-23, widening Carthage's lead to 2-0 in the match.
 
The Raiders scored the first two points of the third set in hopes to come back from the two set deficit. Carthage quickly responded with four points on two kills and two errors by the Raiders to take the lead, 4-2. Towards the middle of the set, MSOE made a three-point run to reclaim the lead 11-10 over Carthage. The Red Men mounted a quick counter attack and scored four in a row to reclaim the lead with a score of 14-11. Later on with the set tied 19-19 the Red Men scored two points on an error by the Raiders and a kill by Will Craft to take the lead once again 21-19. The Red Men retained the lead for the remainder of the set and would win 25-21, securing their 3-0 sweep of MSOE.
 
The win makes Carthage the standalone first place leader in the MCVL with a conference record of 11-0. In addition to a perfect conference record, the Red Men also hold a perfect Division III play record of 20-0.
 
"Today was a good win," said head coach L.J. Marx following the win.  "Not necessarily perfect. I don't think that either side of the net, either team would be over excited with the quality of play.  I think there were a lot of mistake and a lot of tentativeness and that may have been to the added pressure of two teams being 10-0.  We talked all week about being the aggressor.  And after taking the first set they were chasing us and we wanted to continue to push that.  A good win.  Lots of things that we did well.  Some things that we need to continue to work on.  But we will take it."
 
As a team, the Red Men collected 37 kills, one service ace, seven blocks, 35 assists, 38 digs, and hit .271. Griffin Shields led the team in kills with 14, accompanied by Will Craft with nine and Scotty Adamczyk with six. Shields also earned once service ace in the match. J.P. Tulacka collected six blocks, followed by Shields with three blocks and Matt Reinsel with two blocks. Reinsel also collected 32 assists in the match. Scotty Adamczyk connected on nine digs, closely followed by Reinsel with eight and Craft with six.
 
Looking ahead to the end of the season facing a perfect Division III record Marx explained, "It's something that we talked about from last year to this year.  Last year we had five losses in Division III play and just missed out on the NCAA Tournament.  And those were losses to some of the best teams in the country.  As goofy as it may sound, we had a lengthy discussion about there being no way they can keep an undefeated team out of the NCAA Tournament.  And that is something that we have really put our mind to.  Our one loss on the year is to a Division II team on opening weekend.  So we set a pretty lofty goal and it definitely creates some added pressure when you are committed to never losing.  But the guys are working hard and we got lucky we were on spring break this week with this match because it really just allowed the guys to take a deep breath and focus solely on volleyball."
 
The Red Men will return to play on Friday, April 1 at 7 p.m. as they host MCVL opponent College of Mount St. Joseph at Tarble Arena. Then, on Saturday, April 2 at 3 p.m., Carthage will close out the regular season against Wittenberg University, also at Tarble Arena.