In front of their home crowd for the first time in school history the Dolphins dropped three straight sets to New Jersey City University, 25-15, 25-7, and 27-25. With the win the Gothic Knights improved to 3-1 overall while the Dolphins fell to 0-3 on the year.
The Gothic Knights jumped out to an early 10-2 lead in the first set before the Dolphins were able to settle in and score four straight points to shrink the lead to 10-6 which was the closest CSI came to the Knights. After going on that run mid set the Dolphins seemed to unravel as NJCU was picking their spots and finding the open areas on the court for kills.
Song Shin Low was able to bring the Dolphins to life towards the end of game one with a pair of serves that cause errors from the Gothic Knight squad. That burst of life was quickly ended by the Knights as they closed the door relatively quickly after that and took game one.
Game two was NJCU’s game the whole time as the Dolphins were charged with 13 errors. They seemed to have settled into the game while the Dolphins seemed rattled after their game one defeat and were unable to recover as the Knights couldn’t be stopped. The sheer power that the Knights were hitting the ball with caused several errors from the Dolphins side, and when the men were able to get an attack going they hurt themselves with unforced errors. CSI would go on to lose game two 25-7 their worst loss of the night.
Game three was the Dolphins’ best outing of the night, they were able to get the lead and hold it for most of the set. Unfortunately for the Dolphins their good fortune in game three started to fizzle out towards the end and once the Knights tied it up at 24 apiece they didn’t look back as they went on to take game three 27-25.
Brian Sheydvasser finished the game with a team high six kills while Philip Szumanski led the way with 9 assists. The Dolphins as a team hit -.072 through three games which was their second lowest of the season. Danil Kubovitskiy protected the net tonight the best he could against the potent NJCU offense and recorded a team high three blocks.
The Dolphins are back in action on Saturday for a Tri-Match at John Jay College where they will take on CUNYAC leaders Baruch College and CCNY.