KENOSHA, Wis. – The Carthage College men's volleyball team earned their biggest win of the season Saturday as the #7 Red Men knocked-off the #3 Stevens Institute of Technology Ducks at Tarble Arena, 3-1.
 
The win moves the Red Men to 18-1 on the year, while the AVCA's #3 Ducks fall to 22-3.
 
"Today was a great win!" said head coach L.J. Marx after the match.  "We knew going into this week with MSOE and Stevens that we were going to have a good opportunity to answer some questions about how good are we and where are we at?  I think that with the wins we figured out that we are pretty good but we still have some things we need to work on in order to improve."
 
Setter Matt Reinsel had his second highest assist total of the season on Saturday as the sophomore spread the ball around the court for 50 assists.  Griffin Shields was on the receiving end of a majority of those as the senior finished with a match-high and season-high 25 kills.  Shields also added a pair of the Red Men's three aces on the day. 
 
Marc Hansen was second on the team behind Griffin Shields with 16 kills and Zach Lillig had six. 
 
On the defensive side, Shields led the Red Men with ten digs followed by libero Cody Bolan with nine.  Lillig led the Red Men with seven blocks in the match, followed by Reinsel with six and Max Bongratz with five.
 
The Red Men opened with a strong first set that saw the Red Men fall behind 10-6 after Stevens went on a 4-0 run.  Carthage made their move still trailing by four, 12-8, as the Red Men went on a 9-3 run to take a 17-15 lead.  Tied at 18-18 in the opening set, Carthage went on a 7-0 run behind the serve of Tony Allen to take the opening set, 25-18.
 
An exciting second set saw the Ducks ties the match at 1-1 as they edged the Red Men out, 27-25.   Carthage and Stevens went back and forth throughout the set with a total of eight lead changes and 16 ties in the set.
 
"In the second set it was 27-25 them and we had four or five mental errors that won't show up in the stats that if we had corrected we would have won that set," said the head coach.  "In the third set we corrected those errors but still had a couple little breakdowns as far as some system stuff and game planning.  But we overcame it and Stevens started struggling a little bit.  It may not have necessarily been that we were playing better as much as things reversed and they made the errors we had made in the second and it gave us some confidence."
 
Carthage responded in the third with a nail-biter set that went the Red Men's way, as Carthage regained their lead with a 25-23 win in the third.  Carthage cleaned up their attack in the set, committing just four errors and hitting .333, while the Ducks hitting woes were starting with a .172 performance and seven errors.
 
The Red Men followed that up with their best set of the match in the fourth.
 
For the fourth set, Carthage tallied ten kills to just two errors in the 25-13 decisive set, but it was the Red Men's dominance on the defensive side that gave the Red Men the match.  Carthage recorded nine blocks in the fourth set, including six by Lillig and five by Reinsel, which helped the Red Men open up 16-6 lead before eventually running away with the set.
 
On the fourth set performance Marx stated, "Prior to the fourth set we talked about being up 2-1 in our gym and the guys really responded with a conversation about only having three team blocks through three sets and Stevens had scored a ton by challenging our block.  So to see us respond with nine blocks in the fourth set, including six in the first 14 points, it was really good to see.  The guys felt the confidence and it got us on a roll for those opening few points.  When we get rolling and start feeling that confident we are pretty tough to slow down."
 
The Red Men will hit the road for their next two matches, beginning with a game in Dubuque, Iowa on Friday, March 31^st against Loras.