Contact: Drew Sauer, Assistant Sports Information Director, 630-637-5324

Box Score

Mar. 31, 2017 – Winners of seven of the last eight matches, the North Central College men's volleyball team finished with double digit kills in each of the four sets in their 3-1 win over Greenville College on Friday evening, doubling last season's win total in the process.

The Cardinals (16-7, 9-5 MCVL) came out a little flat in the opening set, falling behind 12-10 midway through, but the offense caught fire to the tune of a 7-1 run to quickly take a 17-13 lead.  The rally was highlighted by a pair of service aces from Bozhidar Kolev, while Jake Braceros, Brendan Crawford and Justin Curtis all recorded kills set up from Raymond Kraus.

The Panthers (9-16, 3-15 MCVL) pulled to within two points of the lead late 24-22, but a Cardinal timeout settled the troops and Jason Eslinger sent home the set winning kill on the following point to secure the opening set win for North Central.  The Cardinal offense hit .345 in the opening set, recording 14 kills to just four attack errors.

Set number two was back-and-forth nearly the entire way, as North Central actually faced set point trailing 24-23, but two huge kills from Crawford turned the tables, setting up set point for North Central.

After a bad set evened the score at 25, Crawford was not to be denied, sending home the most important of his five kills in the set, while Braceros followed suit with the set-winning kill to give North Central a 2-0 lead with the 27-25 second set win.

North Central struggled in the third set, hitting at just a .133 clip while Greenville hit a match-high .265 in the set to claim the 25-22 victory.

The Cardinals regained their stride in the fourth set however, as back-to-back Panther attack errors broke an 18-all tie and North Central would hold the lead from that point on.  Nick Lilley entered the contest late in the fourth set and captured the win for North Central with the match-winning kill set up from Kraus.

North Central held a 56-46 margin in kills, finishing with a hitting percentage of .252 to Greenville's .152 percentage.  Kolev paced the Cardinal attack with 12 kills, while Crawford finished with 11 and Kraus dished out a team-leading 35 assists.  Defensively, Kolev led the team with 10 digs while Curtis finished with five total blocks.

The MCVL's leader in kills, Manuel Benitez, led the Greenville offense with 19 kills but hit just .160 on 50 total attempts.  Isaiah Canales and Johnny Milabu each finished with 10 kills, while Tanner Smith handed out a match-high 39 assists.

North Central wraps up the home portion of the schedule tomorrow, playing host to fourth-ranked Carthage College at 2 p.m. inside Gregory Arena.  The link to live in-game statistics is available HERE.