As the setter for the Ohio State men’s volleyball team, Daniel Mathews touches the ball on almost every play.
In back-to-back games Monday and Tuesday against Springfield College, he had 30 or more sets, two service aces and 14 blocks.
Mathews knows what sets a hitting team apart from a blocking team.
“There is a fine line between the blocking team having the advantage and the hitting team having the advantage,” he said. “We had success in these games because we were in sync in our timing in our block.”
Mathews said the better the block, the fewer options the hitter has. He said it was clear in these past two games that OSU was the blocking team.
On Monday, the team put up 12 blocks to zero for Springfield, winning 3-0 (30-17, 30-18, 30-17). Tuesday, the Buckeyes came out stronger with 15 blocks to the Pride’s one, with the outcome almost parallel to the night before: 3-0 (29-18, 30-21, 30-24). The 12th-ranked Buckeyes are 4-0 this season.
Coach Pete Hanson said the amount of blocks his players put up were in part an execution of the game plan and in part a result of Springfield’s outside hitters being on the smaller side. He said good blocking is not possible without good serving.
The Buckeyes’ serving had plenty of velocity, giving the Pride only one option: setting high balls. This opened the court for OSU’s outside and middle hitters to put up a solid two-person block.
“We told our guys that if our game plan works the way we have drawn it up, which is to serve strong and get them into that (no option) situation, our strength would take over and we would block some balls from our weak side out.”
Over the course of the two games, OSU collected 17 service aces, compared to the Pride’s five. Leading the Buckeyes on the serve was Dan Meske, with five aces. Meske, an outside hitter, said aces boost momentum because they are earned points.
“Once we start to rev up our serves and get some aces, we can finish off the teams,” Meske said.
Meske made his debut as an outside hitter this season. Now that he serves the ball three or four times a game (as opposed to once in his previous position as serving specialist), he has a better chance of getting in a groove, making the aces easier to achieve. Like Hanson, Meske feels the way other teams play against the Buckeyes is dependent on the serve.
Meske said if the serves are tough, the other team will fall out of their system, which is what happened to Springfield. They gave up 22 points to hitting errors in each game, which did not go unnoticed by the Buckeyes.
“It is pretty degrading to them to get blocked that much,” Meske said. “It gets them to try and hit shots they can’t make, and they gave us almost a game’s worth of points.”
Meske and Mathews were just two of the 10 players who added to the team’s win. Mathews believes the most important thing his team can do in any game is play as a unit, because each player can only touch the ball once for a split second, and must rely on the next touch to be better than the one before it.
“All six players can touch the ball in three or four seconds, and a lot can happen in three or four seconds,” Mathews said. “You aren’t going to get that result if you aren’t all on the same page.”
Playing teams back-to-back does not have much of an effect on the players, according to Mathews. The junior said one of the things that sets the team apart from teams in past years is the confidence they have going into every match, regardless of when they last played.
“We have that confidence and swagger and the talent to back it up,” Mathews said.
The Buckeyes get another chance to showcase their “swagger” Friday night at 7 p.m. against St. Francis.
Lauren Polinsky can be reached at [email protected].
