Comeback Coyotes! Men’s Volleyball rallies from 0-2 deficit to beat Graceland in five sets
Nothing was going right for Dustin Sahlmann's Kansas Wesleyan Men's Volleyball team in the first two sets on Friday night against Graceland.
Then, like a light switch, the Coyotes came to life and things definitely went Wesleyan's way.
The Coyotes put forth a dominating performance in the final three sets to come back and take out the YellowJackets 19-25, 16-25, 25-17, 25-18, 15-7 inside Mabee Arena.
"I told my guys after the second set that the only thing better than a 3-0 sweep is a 3-0 reverse sweep and that's what we ended up getting," Sahlmann said.
Wesleyan came out of the first two sets hitting negative, but quickly righted the ship, hitting .300 in the final three sets. The Coyotes also cleaned up several parts of their game including passing and service errors, and Sahlmann pointed out a change in offense also sparked the Coyotes.
"We talk about it every day is that if we pass well, teams are going to have a hard time beating us and our passing got better in the final three sets," he said. "We also made a tactical change, switching to a 6-2 from a 5-1 and that helped with our blocking a little bit. That was the two biggest things, our passing and our blocking got better.
"We cleaned up our serving too. We had to stop giving them free points."
Twelve of KWU's 18 service errors came in the first three sets, but things cleaned up dramatically in the last two sets.
The Coyotes trailed 11-9 in the third set when things turned. A kill by Colin Lindo and a Graceland hitting error tied things up at 11-all. Graceland briefly led 12-11 before the Coyotes got it going using a 5-1 run to take a 16-13 lead on a kill by Kahlib Lawrence.
The go-ahead run led by Angel Diaz serving and setting for the Coyotes after the switch to the 6-2 offense late in the second set.
"That's one of the things about Angel is that he is pretty levelheaded for the most part, and is a great culture kid," Sahlmann said. "He will do what you ask him to do and so I had full confidence that we could switch to that 6-2 and do what we needed to do."
It was 21-17 Coyotes when KWU closed the door on Graceland, scoring the final four points of the set to win 25-17.
Wesleyan trailed 8-5 in the fourth set, but again got to work, and came back and took a 9-8 lead on a big Coyote block by Viet Nguyen and Lindo that forced a Graceland timeout.
The score teetered back and forth until the Coyotes grabbed the lead for good in the set on Lawrence's solo block and the Coyotes would extend the lead again out to 16-13 behind Diaz's serve and a renewed front row block.
It was 16-14 Coyotes when KWU pulled away down the stretch capping the set with a block by Justin Burras to close the set with a 25-18 victory and force a fifth.
The Coyotes fell behind 3-0 to start the fifth set, but the building suspense quickly subsided. A Graceland hitting error sparked what turned into a 10-0 run that made it 10-3 Coyotes. It never got closer than six the rest of the set as the Coyotes closed out the come back win with a 15-7 win.
Lawrence led the Coyotes with 11 kills, while Lindo had 10 to pace KWU's balanced offensive attack as three other players had at least six kills. KWU hit .149 for the match. Tyler McUne had 19 assists and Diaz had 10. Jeremy Lapeze had 10 digs for the Coyotes. Lindo had five blocks and Lawrence had six.
The Coyotes are back in action on Saturday, hosting University of Health Sciences and Pharmacy, UHSP, at 1 p.m. in Mabee Arena. UHSP plays Central Christian at 11 a.m. at Mabee Arena as well.
It's a match-up the Coyotes have been looking forward to since playing to open the season in St. Louis.
"We faced them a couple weeks ago in St. Louis. I felt that we had the match in hand, but we let it slip away," Sahlmann said. "It's Just part of having a young team early in the season, they have to learn how to close things out. I'm hoping if we have the same kind of atmosphere as we had tonight, we will be able to go out and get the win."