Loyola head coach Mark Hulse voted for Ohio State in the MIVA preseason coaches poll. 

“They won the league pretty handedly three times in a row and until somebody could dethrone them, I was going to say, ‘Hey, it’s Ohio State,’” Hulse said, speaking by phone from the bus on the way to the Ramblers’ Thursday-night match with McKendree in St. Louis.

But heading into Sunday’s meeting with the Buckeyes, which will air on Big Ten Network, Hulse’s Loyola squad is 11-3 and ranked No. 7 nationally, while Ohio State is 5-9 and unranked, only just having turned around a four-match skid with a win over Quincy on Saturday.

Pete Hanson’s Buckeyes have suffered mightily from injuries, reminiscent of the bedraggled Ohio State women’s team that limped through the 2018 season 12-20, winning just three matches in Big Ten play. 

Junior outside hitter Reese Devilbiss missed two weeks early in the season with a concussion. With setters Sanil Thomas and freshman Luke Lentin both out for a period of time, Parker Mikesch, a libero, started four matches at the setter position before Lentin was cleared to return to action. Thomas, a senior and the more experienced option, remains out of commission.

Loyola holds steady at No. 7 in the @AVCAVolleyball Coaches' Poll, marking the 100th consecutive time the program has been ranked in the Top-15. #OnwardLU

? | https://t.co/CZMAp4f22f pic.twitter.com/RenQTwj4hE

— Loyola Men's Volleyball (@RamblersMVB) February 18, 2019

But perhaps most painful has been the loss of redshirt sophomore opposite Jake Hanes, who as of Jan. 26 (the night of the last match he played in, a 1-3 loss to Ball State) led the nation in points while boasting a hitting percentage in the .400s. 

To fill in for Hanes, Hanson even had to pull freshman Sean Ryan’s redshirt. 

For the Loyola coaching staff, all of that uncertainty means a lot of question marks in the scouting report.

“They’re certainly a really different team without Hanes and Sanil Thomas on the court, and I don’t know what the timelines are on those guys, so we’re having to kind of prepare for two teams,” Hulse said. “You’re trying to figure out not just who is going to play but how are they going to play and what are they doing because they are certainly getting better and they’re progressing and morphing as they go. 

“But in the back of your head, you’re still worried that Hanes is going to show up, and, man, they set him a bucket of balls, and we were looking, he was hitting well into the .400s at the point at which he got injured or whatever it was. So the moment that he shows back up, their team dynamic changes, and frankly our whole league dynamic changes.”

So of course, Loyola is returning to the age-old mantra of controlling its side of the net.

S4 | When you play for @CollinMahan's ? it opens up space for a floater!

Kill number 18 for Mahan ties it up at 10-10. #OnwardLU pic.twitter.com/r6iK3yBJPT

— Loyola Men's Volleyball (@RamblersMVB) February 17, 2019

“We’ll certainly focus a certain portion of our efforts in a given week on what are the bad guys doing, how does that impact us?” Hulse explained. “But a lot of it is, within this scope of what we do well, what can we do to be really successful against the team? Which is a little bit different than saying, how do we need to chase them, what do we need to do to react?”

And on the Loyola side of the net, you’ve got Collin Mahan, a 6-foot-5 senior outside hitter from Victor, New York, who the MIVA coaches dubbed the preseason player of the year. So far, he’s lived up to the billing, leading the Ramblers’ offense with 185 kills, hitting .338.

According to Hulse, Mahan entered his senior season with a new level of confidence. He’s focused on getting better, having realized that he’s really good at this game, but imagine how great he could be if he just improved upon a few small details.

“If you ask people around the country the weakness to his game was that he could get in his own way sometimes,” Hulse said. “If you got a couple blocks or if you put some pressure on him, he could start to have a little bit of self-doubt and that’s largely gone this year.”

But even with Mahan taking 8.18 swings a set, Loyola benefits from a fairly well-balanced offense, with six different players capable of scoring.

How's this for hustle!? @luke_denton12 pic.twitter.com/3KMX5HEhGA

— Loyola Men's Volleyball (@RamblersMVB) February 16, 2019

Junior middle blocker Kyle Piekarski faced the unenviable task of filling the spot of graduated All-American Jeff Jendryk, a member of the U.S. men’s national team who is now playing professionally for Berlin Recycling Volleys in Germany. With 102 kills, hitting .472, with 29 total blocks, you’d have to say Piekarski is thriving.

Junior Will Tischler had played supporting roles in previous seasons, but having finally secured a starting spot, he ranks second on the team with 145 kills. Freshman opposite Luke Denton and senior middle Paul Narup round out the offensive core, with Narup also tallying 1.25 blocks per set, good for seventh in the country.

Loyola’s Class of 2018 won the national championship in 2015 and along with Jendryk, that group included opposite Ricky Gevis, Ryan Jamison, and libero Jake Selsky.

“With them leaving, there was a lot of uncertainty ... not just how good were we going to be—because that was a concern, we set Jeff a lot of balls and he made a lot of stuff possible—but also, like how whole were we from a leadership standpoint?” Hulse said. 

“What we realized really quickly is that we lost some physicality, especially in Jeff and Rick, Ricky Gevis, no doubt, but we had all the same voices that we had had ... Avery Aylsworth, Garrett Zolg, Dane LeClair were absolutely the best voices that we had in the program, and they were just as strong as ever and so we really didn’t miss a beat in some regards.”

With Mahan, Tischler, Narup and setter Zolg leading the way, Loyola scored valuable out-of-conference wins early in the season over then-No. 5 Pepperdine, then-No. 11 CSUN, and Penn State. The Ramblers even managed to push No. 4 UC Irvine to five sets in the opening match of the season.

Last year, Hulse said, with Ohio State looking like the clear favorite to win the MIVA (and thus earn the automatic bid to the NCAA tournament), the Ramblers were already plotting in January what they had to do to be worthy of an at-large bid come May.

“Which is crippling, psychologically, I think, and we felt so much pressure,” Hulse said.

So this year, the mission was clear. The Ramblers were going to get to the NCAA Tournament the old fashioned way, by winning the conference. Instead of being about improving RPI, the early season non-conference matches would represent a chance to improve in hopes of being good enough to host the conference tournament and then win it.

“And then what did we do?” Hulse said. “We screwed up and started winning some games in January. And so now we feel the pressure a little bit, because you’re doing a little bit of the math and you’re saying, ‘Hey, based on what we did in the preseason, I think we’re in the mix.’ We could be in a better spot, but we’re in the mix for an at-large, and I hope it’s not crippling and all of a sudden you’re just worried about not losing instead of trying to get better and make sure you’re good for the tournament in April.”

The match with Ohio State is big for the Ramblers, but first they play McKendree on Thursday night. With a 3-1 record, the Bearcats sit third in the MIVA standings, so it’s certainly not a match Loyola can afford to disregard. The same night, Ohio State faces Lewis, which is 4-0 and tied with Loyola for the top spot in the conference. 

No doubt, Loyola will spend Saturday closely analyzing the game tape and stats sheet from Ohio State’s match with Lewis, looking for the names “Thomas” and “Hanes.” Because, as Coach Hulse said, their return could change everything.