[Men's Volleyball] St. Ambrose falls in CCAC Tournament semifinals

After rallying from two sets down, St. Ambrose ran out of gas and saw its season come to an end in a 25-23, 25-19, 22-25, 12-25, 15-8 loss to No. 9 Robert Morris in the semifinals of the CCAC Tournament Friday night.

As the No. 10-ranked team in the country, the Bees likely needed to win the conference tournament to advance to the NAIA National Invitational later this month.

SAU (21-10) nearly kept its season alive by recovering from a slow start.

The Bees won the first four points of the third set and led 8-2 and 17-10 along the way to forcing a fourth set. In the fourth, they were even more dominant. 

With the fourth tied at 4-4, two Zach Schmidt kills came part of a four-point run and SAU never looked back. Scott MacGillis had five kills and Schmidt, Spencer Lanig and Levi Vermuelen each had three as St. Ambrose collected 16 kills against just one hitting error (.577 hitting percentage) in the set.

But the comeback fizzled out in the fifth.

Robert Morris (26-9) won the first four points of the decisive set. St. Ambrose got to within three points four times from there, the last time at 8-5 on a MacGillis kill, before the Eagles closed out the win and earned a spot in Saturday's championship match against host and No. 7-ranked Cardinal Stritch. RMU hit .688 (12 kills, one error) in the final set.