THE AGENDA
The OUAZ men's volleyball team will head across the valley to face No. 5 Benedictine Mesa on Thursday night at 7 p.m. The non-conference match will be played at Heap Gymnasium on the campus of Mesa Community College.
Live video and stats will be available for the match courtesy of Benedictine Mesa. The video feed will be available on the NAIA Network and the Redhakws Game Central portal. The NAIA Network is available on Amazon Fire TV, Android TV, Apple TV, and Roku devices by searching NAIA. Links for all live coverage is available at
OUAZSpirit.com/live.
ABOUT THE SPIRIT
OUAZ heads to Mesa with a 5-2 overall record and coming off a 3-1 loss to Hope International last Friday night. The Spirit are 0-1 in road matches on the season and 4-1 in all matches played away from home. They are 0-1 in GSAC play.
The Spirit enter this week's match hitting .246 on the season while averaging 11.05 kills per set. They rank second in the GSAC with that hitting percentage while placing third in kills average. The team leads the conference with their 2.14 service aces per set.
OUAZ also leads the GSAC in holding the opposition to .072 hitting. They record 2.02 blocks per set and a conference-best 9.55 digs per set.
Jacob Vander Beek leads the Spirit with 56 kills and he is third in the GSAC by averaging 3.29 kills per set. He has a pair of matches with double-digit kills this season while he currently ranks 11th in the conference by hitting .256.
James Yahner is fifth in the league by averaging 2.53 kills per set with 48 total kills. He is 14th in the GSAC with his .227 hitting percentage and fourth in the conference at 0.63 aces per set. Yanher places fifth in the conference by averaging 1.84 digs per set.
Bryan Ilena starts the week as the GSAC leader in hitting percentage at .412. He has recorded 37 kills and also ranks fourth in the conference at 0.89 blocks per set.
ABOUT BENEDICTINE MESA
Benedictine Mesa will enter Thursday with a 5-3 overall record and with a No. 5 national ranking. After dropping three of their first four matches, the Redhawks have won four straight with three sweeps. Logan Adcock is second in the GSAC with his 3.44 kills per set average while Bobby Henige is second at 1.00 blocks per set.
The two teams met three times last season with BenU Mesa winning all three meetings. In the match played in Mesa, the Redhawks came away with a 3-1 win.
