The College of Staten Island men’s volleyball took part in another CUNYAC multi-match this morning at John Jay College and took on Medgar Evers College in the first match of the morning followed by a match against Brooklyn College. The Dolphins picked up their first win of the season this morning against the Cougars in straight sets (25-16, 28-26, 26-24). The second match of the day was a hard fought battle that took five sets to determine a winner with the Dolphins coming out on top, (16-25, 23-25, 25-23, 25-20, 15-8). The Dolphins move to 2-5 overall and 2-3 in the CUNYAC.
The men kicked off the match with a nice win in set one, 26-16. Danil Kukovitskiy led the attack for the Dolphins with three kills on eight attacks. Early in the first set in was back-and-forth as both teams looked for their first CUNYAC win. Staten Island would eventually pull away at the end as they were able to quell the Cougars’ attack and go on a 9-0 run to finish the set and go up 1-0.
In set two the Dolphins had their hands full with the Cougars as Medgar took them past 25 points and made Staten Island put up 28 points to secure a win. Again the Dophins were in a tug-of-war battle with the Cougars and as the set wore on it looked like Medgar might pull away. The Dolphins had other ideas and were able to weather Medgar’s 6-0 run. Both teams would eventually find themselves deadlocked at 24 points and continued to go back and forth for two more points until the Dolphins amped up their attack and scored the final two points needed to secure the second set. Justin Edwardsen came up big in this crucial match and secured four kills on eight attacks. Edwardsen was also a wall at the net and recorded 13 blocks in this match (9 assisted, 4 solo).
Both teams seemed to have more flow in the final set of the morning as both teams would go on a run and the other team would answer with a similar run of their own. Brandon Lei was precise with his passes and would set the Dolphins up for success and would finish the match with 19 assists.
The second match of the day would take the Dolphins to the brink and back. The men would see themselves fall behind 0-2 in the match before rallying back and winning three in a row to win their second CUNYAC match of the season.
The Bulldogs would get the best of the Dolphins in the first set after they sat inactive for three hours. Brooklyn would surge past the Dolphins in set one 25-16 after the men committed 9 errors and only secured five kills.
Staten Island started to pull it together in the second set and only fell 23-25 but the determination was there. Song Shin Low and Kukovitskiy were strong in this game and both recorded four kills in the loss. Despite being down 0-2 the Dolphins held their head high and believed they had it in them to take down Brooklyn.
Set three is where the Dolphins showed their determination and picked up a 25-23 win. CSI used the momentum they got from winning set three and carried it over to the final two sets to pick up a dramatic win in five sets.
The Dolphins will return to action on Tuesday at 7:00 pm at the CSI Sports & Recreation Center vs St. Joseph’s College – Brooklyn.
