Mighty Oaks roll late, take down Rio

Rio Grande Sports Information
     RIO GRANDE, Ohio - As good as the fifth set was to the University of Rio Grande in Friday night's come-from-behind win over St. Mary-of-the-Woods College, it was equally as harsh against Oakland City University less than 24 hours later.
     The visiting Mighty Oaks scored the first four points of the deciding stanza and never looked back, cruising to a decisive win which culminated a 23-25, 25-22, 25-19, 19-25, 15-6 over the RedStorm, Saturday afternoon, in River States Conference men's volleyball action at the Newt Oliver Arena.
     Oakland City pushed its overall record to 12-5 and moved to 5-3 in league play with the victory.
     Rio Grande dropped to 11-8 overall and 3-5 in the RSC with the loss.
     The RedStorm, who rallied to force the deciding period by leading from start to finish in set four, failed to maintain their momentum when they needed it most.
     The Mighty Oaks bolted to a 4-0 lead in set five and, although Rio did cut the early deficit in half on three occasions, another 4-0 run by visitors produced a commanding 10-4 cushion which, essentially, decided the final outcome once and for all.
     Oakland City hit .444 in the final set (five kills, one error, nine attacks), while Rio Grande had two more errors (5) than kills (3) in 16 swings for a -.125 mark.
     Gaston Barrionuevo and Hazem Nabil Abdelghafar had 15 kills each to pace the Mighty Oaks, while Tinevimbo Goto added 13 kills of his own. Goto also had two service aces, a solo block and five block assists, while Barrioneuvo and Abdelghafar had four block assists each.
     Danilo Negrao contributed 34 assists to the winning effort, while Maycor Carrion had 16 digs and Kendrick Marquez had 10 assists of his own.
     The Mighty Oaks, who finished with a .207 attack percentage for the match (51 kills, 22 errors, 140 swings), also got seven block assists from Robin Ruhe and six block assists from Pawel Kulinski.
     Rio Grande hit .132 for the match with 58 kills and 37 errors in 159 attacks.
     Senior Daniel Bedoya (Acacias, Colombia) led a trio of double-digit killers for the RedStorm with 18, while freshman Daniel Rivas (Valle Del Cauca, Colombia) and sophomore Otavio Tonoli (Campinas, Brazil) added 14 and 10, respectively. Bedoya and Tonoli also had 11 digs each.
     Freshman Camilo Murillo (Cali, Colombia) finished with 53 assists, while freshman Maaz Khan (Peshawar, Pakistan) had 21 digs and senior Cam Griffith (Columbus, OH) added a pair of block assists.
     Rio Grande returns to action on Friday night when it hosts defending national champion Georgetown (Ky.) College.
     First serve is set for 7:05 p.m.