THE OL' COLLEGE TRY

Box Score

RIVERSIDE, Calif. --- If Monday night's 4-game victory over NCAA Div. I Princeton proved anything to Ryan McGuyre, it was that his team needs a day off.

McGuyre's 3-time defending NAIA Champion and top-ranked California Baptist, playing in the final match of 6 contests in the past 5 days, struggled in game 2, but recovered for a 30-20, 23-30, 30-28, 30-20 win.

Winners of their last 8 matches, the Lancers improve to 8-4 on the season, while the Tigers drop their season opener, falling to 0-1.

“This was not our best match of overall play,” said McGuyre, the fifth-year Lancer coach. “We've been playing a lot of volleyball and traveling just as much in the past few days, so we wanted to rest some guys tonight. As it turned out, we ended up relying on our regulars in clutch situations.”

Shamsu Awudu, the 2-time defending NAIA Tournament MVP, had a match-high 20 kills, hit a staggering .643 (20-2-28), including a .737 average in the first 3 sets. Donald Baliaba (Yaounde, Cameroon) tallied 16 kills and a .448 percentage (16-3-29) on the night.

The NAIA's National Player of the Week Corey Spence notched a match-high 7 digs in the win.

“Shamsu carried us a ton in the Lindenwood tournament this past weekend, and we were looking to get him some rest tonight,” said McGuyre. “He's been providing us with a ton of physical and emotional energy this year. Shamsu and Donald each brought that leadership quality to the court tonight.”

Awudu served a 4-point rally, as the Lancers stretched the game-one lead to 28-18. The Lancers, who out-blocked the Tigers 3-0 in the first set, hit a staggering .636 (16-2-22), while holding the Tigers to a .036 (10-9-28) clip in the opener?a 30-20 win for California Baptist.

Princeton sprinted out to a 20-11 lead, forcing a California Baptist timeout after the Tigers' Mike Vincent (10 kills) notched a kill to polish off a 5-2 run. The Tigers not only out-hit the Lancers, .312 (16-9-32) to -.120 (6-9-25) in the set, but posted 3 blocks to the Lancers' one in the 30-23 win.

The Tigers forced the issue in game 3 as well, taking a 27-26 lead before Awudu's kill?off an Urs Gunthor set?kicked off a 4-1 game-ending run. The slumbering Lancer offense woke up in the third set, hitting .467 (18-4-30) en route to the 30-28 victory.

With California Baptist in the lead at 26-18, Bryan Anders served an ace and then set up a memorable kill from Baliaba, whose attack knocked a digging Tiger to the floor. Baliaba, who was last week's NAIA Player of the Week, finished the game on an exclamation point, at 30-20.

California Baptist had 14 kills against just 2 kills on 24 swings (.500) in the final set, while holding Princeton to .083 (10-8-24).

Eric Plunkett, a 2006 NAIA All-Tournament selection, dealt out 43 assists for CBU.

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