- Sacred Heart committed 34 total errors.
- Players believed it was a big part of the win.
- Coach Joel Walton said his defense played a role in the errors.
Tied at 23 with the second set hanging in the balance, Ball State waited for Sacred Heart to serve.
Maybe Larry Wrather would receive the serve, pass to Graham McIlvaine, who would set the ball for Marcin Niemczewski to get a kill. Or maybe Shane Witmer would receive, McIlvaine would set, and Kevin Owens would attack.
None of those players would touch the ball on that point, and neither would anybody else on the team. The ball harmlessly sailed out of bounds with no assistance from any Ball State player.
Just like the other 16 times, Sacred Heart committed service errors.
All match, Sacred Heart committed errors of every type—34 in all—providing Ball State nearly half of the necessary 75 points required to win a match.
“It makes it a heck of a lot easier for us,” Wrather said with a smile. “Especially since they’ve got a couple of guys that can put a really good serve out there but when they’re giving up free points, it’s a blessing.”
After several service errors in the third set, Sacred Heart’s head coach Kalani Efstathiou and whichever player served the ball often looked frustrated, knowing they were giving Ball State points that Ball State didn’t even have to earn.
Sacred Heart landed just .734 of their serves and hit just .211 throughout the match. Although serving isn’t affected by Ball State, many attack errors can be forced by defensive pressure.
The Cardinals routinely had blocking walls of two or three players when their opponent took a swing at the ball. The Pioneers distributed their attack well, with three players having at least 17, but struggled to break through Ball State’s front line.
Often, Sacred Heart’s Will Leclerc and Enzo Mackenzie were forced to hit around and over the Ball State defense. Without clear lanes to attack, the ball sailed long and wide.
“Some of those attacking errors were a result of our blocking ability and I was pleased to see that,” Ball State head coach Joel Walton said. “I like that we actually did some point scoring with our own serving this time.”
Ball State committed 12 service errors of their own but countered with seven aces; Niemczewski leading with three.
Walton said although he thought the team performed better, there’s still a long way to go when it comes to serving and attacking. He added that Sacred Heart’s struggles to keep the ball in play were instrumental in the win.
With the first two sets seeing a combined 28 ties and 13 lead changes, each error committed by Sacred Heart allowed Ball State to either steal momentum or solidify its lead.
It was too much for the Pioneers to overcome: the 17 serving errors, 15 attack errors and two blocking errors.
“They made a lot of mistakes,” Walton said.
34 too many.
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