CHICAGO—The Illinois Institute of Technology men's volleyball team hosted NAIA foe Trinity Christian College at the Keating Sports Center on Saturday. Both teams battled their way to extra points in the fifth set, making the score 16-16 before the Trolls iced the match with back-to-back kills en route to an 18-16 set victory and 3-2 match win (25-22, 17-25, 25-21, 16-25, 18-16).

The Scarlet Hawks fall to 1-8 while Trinity Christian improves to 7-6.

"We had a pretty good sized opponent in Trinity today," said IIT assistant men's volleyball coach Mike Oswald. "We did a really good job of trying to figure out what our strategies were and holding each other accountable for sticking to the game plan. We caught ourselves in a couple of ruts and gave a way a few too many crucial points at crucial times."

Andriy Bench was the match's top point scorer with 23, much thanks to his career-high seven service aces and 14 kills.  The Scarlet Hawks finished the contest with 17 service aces as Easton Kays, Grant Couper, Evan Robeck, Michael Sherwood and Jannik Birkholz also contributed to that total. 

Couper registered an efficient 15 kills on a .346 hitting mark while Kays rounded out the IIT players with double figure kills with 12. Derek Bostick paced the defense with 14 digs while Birkholz posted a season-high 41 assists. IIT narrowly outhit the Trolls .200 - .188. Djorde Novakovic paced TCC with 12 kills. Jake Ostema commanded a Trinity Christian squad that tallied 29 assisted blocks with nine of his own.

The Scarlet Hawks will host a tri-match on Saturday, February 22, where they'll face Aurora University at 12:00 p.m. and UC Santa Cruz at 5:00 p.m.