ELGIN, Ill. — The Goshen College men's volleyball team split a pair of matches Friday, losing in three sets to ninth-ranked Aquinas College while finishing off host Judson University in extra points of the third set on the opening day of the Judson University Early Bird Tournament at the Lindner Fitness Center.

Alexander Rabadzhiev paced the Maple Leafs (4-4) with a pair of double-digit matches in the kills category, posting 10 in the opener and 12 in the second match to lead all players. Jack Paraha added 15 winners between the two matches and Michael Wahl put up 49 assists while Ian Fox led the team with 6 blocks.

In the first match of the day, Aquinas (8-3) topped the Maple Leafs for the second time this season, winning 25-18, 25-19, 25-20. The Saints recorded 36 kills on 66 swings for a .439 hitting percentage. Zane Moothart led all players with 11 spikes and Will Donald had 8; neither player committed an error as they combined for 27 attacks.

The Saints recorded 9 blocks to Goshen's 1, paced by 5 Donald assists and 3 apiece from a trio of players including Moothart. Moothart also had a match-high 7 digs, outpacing Goshen's Elias Baer by one.

Goshen took a 4-1 lead five points into the first set, but Aquinas won three rallies in a row to tie the score at 4 and trailed only once after that. Goshen kept the margin within a point until 13-12, thanks to back-to-back attack errors and an Andy Bennett winner, but Aquinas responded with a 7-2 run.

The same 7-2 margin opened the second set, while the Saints opened the third on a 7-3 run. A valiant Maple Leaf effort got back within four points in the final stanza at 23-19 on Bennett's ace and Rabadzhiev's kill, but Goshen had little margin for error at that point and the Saints took two of the last three points for the win.

In the second match, Goshen topped the Eagles 25-21, 25-18, 26-24 as each team posted 33 kills on 102 attacks.

Bennett tossed in 5 kills and Fox had 4. Rabadzhiev and Baer both led the Maple Leafs with 9 digs; Judson's Noah McConville had 12 for the match high and Nakuluai Morando posted 11.

Morando added 9 winners to pace the Eagles (6-8), but also recorded a match-high 7 attack errors: Judson had 23 of those to Goshen's 17, accounting for almost half of the 13-point margin of the match.

Judson opened the match with a 6-3 lead, which it extended to 10-6 and then 13-9, before Fox had four blocks in a 7-1 run to flip the score to 16-14 in Goshen's favor. Winners by Rabadzhiev and Wahl rounded out the first set.

The Eagles again opened the second set in front, pulling ahead 4-1 before Goshen answered with another run — coincidentally, that was 7-1 for the second straight set, although Bennett and Wahl led the team in blocks that time. The Maple Leafs would not trail again, getting a subsequent 5-0 run on their way to a two-sets-to-none lead.

Neither team pulled ahead in the third set for the first 10 points, leaving a 5-5 tie to be broken with three straight Goshen points. That set off an 11-3 Judson run, which in turn prompted a 5-0 GC spurt to tie the score at 17. From that point forward, the set was tied at six of the next seven opportunities before Rabadzhiev and Wahl connected on the match-winner.

Goshen concludes the tournament on Saturday with another pair of matches, meeting Rockford College at 1:30 p.m. EST and Clarke University at 5:30 p.m. EST. Live streams for both matches will be available through Judson's Facebook pages.