IRVINE, Calif. – No. 2 UC Irvine finished the week 2-0 against No. 5 BYU with a Friday night win, 3-0 (25-21, 25-12, 25-19) in front of the third-largest Bren Events Center crowd in program history of 2,823 fans.
Outside hitter
Nolan Flexen led the way once again with 14 kills hitting .394 with
Hilir Henno right on his tail with 13 kills and a .393 hitting percentage. Henno delivered three aces to lead the team that picked up eight on the evening.
The team hit .351 on the game hitting over .318 in each set including a high of .500 in the dominant second set.
Joe Karlous was a menace digging up 16 balls to tie a career high while adding an ace, two block assists, 30 assists, and two kills from the setter position.
The second-ranked Anteaters improve to 5-0 and drop the fifth-ranked Cougars to 6-2.
INSIDE THE NUMBERS
>Freshman
Micah Goss was again a force at the net with six block assists to lead all players adding five kills. The team as a whole did not have a blocking error.
>BYU was led by Teilon-Jonathan Tufuga's nine kills
>UCI held the advantage across the stat sheet in kills (41-27), assists (39-25), aces (8-4), and blocks (7.5-7.0)
FIRST SET
>The sides jockeyed early on with each taking leads until the match was even at 11-11
>
Nolan Flexen served up kills for UCI's next three points to take the lead and never look back
>The lead stretched to its highest at 22-15 before BYU made a charge and close it to 22-19
>A key timeout stopped the momentum forcing a service error and UCI closed out the set, 25-21
SECOND SET
>UCI's second set was over from the start charging out to a 7-2 lead with help from three aces before a BYU timeout
>A fourth ace grew the lead to 10-2 and a
Hilir Henno's resounding kill forced another timeout at 14-5
>The 'Eaters continued to put up two and three-point runs until their lead reached 23-10 on another Henno kill
>The set finished 25-12 in favor of UCI, tied for the second-lowest points allowed in a set all season
THIRD SET
>After conceding the opening point, the Anteaters charged to a five-point run helped by BYU attack errors and a
Maxim Grigoriev ace
>The lead never got down below two points as Grigoriev had a pair of kills at 8-6 and 9-7 to keep the momentum
>A marathon rally with multiple athletic saves was punctuated by Flexen to make it 11-7 and start a 6-2 run
>The lead was as much as eight for UCI before BYU crept back in. A poignant challenge call from the 'Eaters was reversed to push back anymore response at 22-16
>
Micah Goss had the final nail with a kill to finish the sweep, 25-19
NOTES
>With three aces, Henno ups his UCI career-leading total to 198
>The crowd of 2,823 fans in the Bren Events Center is the third-largest in program history, narrowly edging the highest previous for a BYU match of 2,817 set in 2006
>This marks the 19th crowd of over 2,000 fans for a home UC Irvine men's volleyball match and most in attendance since 2008
UP NEXT
UC Irvine heads out on the road for the next two weeks with the first stop at No. 9 Stanford for matches on Friday, January 31 and Saturday, February 1
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