Contact: Taiah Gallisath, Sports Information Graduate Assistant, tkgallisath@noctrl.edu

THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. (Feb. 17, 2023) - Continuing to showcase its talent on the western front, No. 11 ranked North Central College men's volleyball took down the No. 12 ranked University of California Santa Cruz in three quick sets on Friday at the Cal Lutheran University Tournament. 

The Cardinals (8-2) pulled ahead in the opening set of their match-up with the Banana Slugs (13-5) with a four-point run that featured a pair of service aces by Jared Moser to bring the score to 9-5. UC Santa Cruz answered back with five-straight points of their own to bring the score within two at 17-15 in favor of the Cardinals. North Central took advantage of three Slug service errors to take the set one win at 25-21.

With UC Santa Cruz taking an early 3-2 lead in set two, North Central responded with four consecutive points thanks to kills from Austin Scott and Jeremy Cardenas to flip the script and lead 6-3. The Cardinals maintained their lead for the remainder of the set while Jake Miller and Cardenas each had four kills helping North Central to the 25-23 set win. 

The third set saw seven tied scores and three lead changes until North Central picked up five-straight points to lead 16-9 before an additional six points extended that lead to 24-12 as Miller added four more kills to his stat line on the evening. With the Cardinals at match-point, the Slugs went to work with four straight points to bring the score to 24-16. That is until Moser finished out the evening's work with a kill to take the third and final set 25-16. 

Miller was the Cardinals' lead scorer with 13 kills on the night, followed by Moser and Cardenas with eight each. Cardenas totaled six blocks while Tyler Donovan had 30 assists. 

North Central concludes their California trip with one final match at the Gilbert Arena as the Cardinals face host school, California Lutheran University at 3 p.m. (PT) on Saturday.

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