STANFORD, Calif. – Juniata men's volleyball fell 3-1 to no. 4 Stanford University Friday night in Maples Pavilion. 

Set scores were 13-25, 25-20, 14-25, and 14-25.

After a dismal first set against the Division I opponent, Juniata (1-1) managed to rebound to take set two in dominating fashion.

The Eagles took advantage of seven Cardinal service errors in the second set and swung at a .579 clip with 12 kills and just one error on 19 total attacks.

The score was tied at every point until the Eagles broke away from Stanford with a freshman Paul Kuhn (York, Pa./Central York) kill that put Juniata up 8-7. From there, Stanford kept the set close, but they were unable to overcome the Eagles and Juniata went on a 17-13 run to win the set by five points.

Juniata reached set point with a block by sophomore Paul Ejups (Bay Shore, N.Y./West Islip), senior John Almquist (York, Pa./Central York) and freshman Joe Bortak (Jeannette, Pa./Penn Trafford) and sealed the win two plays later with a Bortak termination, his third of the night.

In set two senior Ben Wolff (Meadville, Pa./Meadville) captured five of his match high 12 kills. The Juniata squad also posted 3.5 team blocks with Almquist claiming a solo block that put the Eagles at a 21-18 advantage.

In the final two sets the Eagles could not recapture the lead and generated just 15 kills to the Cardinal's 31 in sets three and four.

In addition to Wolff's 12 kills, Kuhn posted 10 and Bortak owned seven, while Ejups and senior Mike Kraft (York, Pa./Eastern York) each contributed three. Almquist finished with 32 of Juniata's 34 assists and had the squad's only two service aces of the contest. Kraft sprawled for a team high eight digs as part of a 25-dig performance by the Blue and Gold.

Juniata capped the night hitting at a .312 attack percentage with a total 35 kills, whereas Stanford charted 62 terminations on 99 swings for a team hitting percentage of .515. The Eagles committed 11 service errors, seven less than the Cardinal's 18. 

The Eagles finish their California trip at UC Santa Cruz on Saturday afternoon with a match slated to begin at 1:00 p.m. Pacific Standard Time.  

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