Taking home only its second Husky Dino Cup title in 12 years, Stanford men’s volleyball opened its exhibition season last weekend with a bang.

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Mehmet Inonu/Stanford Daily File Photo

Sophomore right side Evan Romero was the top attacker for the Cardinal in the Husky Dino Cup, leading the team in kills in its three victories. Romero, libero Jordan Inafuku and setter Kawika Shoji were named to the All-Tournament team, with Shoji named Most Outstanding Player.

Playing across the border in Canada, the Cardinal won the round-robin tournament with three victories against the University of Calgary, the University of Alberta and the University of the Pacific. Stanford beat Calgary in four games, Alberta in five and Pacific in four.

“We had a great performance,” head coach John Kosty said. “We played against some very good competition and rose to the occasion.”

“Our performance was dramatically improved from last year’s outing,” sophomore outside hitter Jason Palacios added. “We were very aggressive with our serving. We had great, great passing the entire weekend.”

The biggest win of the weekend came when the Cardinal outlasted the University of Alberta squad on Friday. Coming into the match, Alberta had an astounding 24-game win streak against Stanford’s conference, the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation (MPSF). The MPSF is the most dominant in all of NCAA men’s volleyball, so Stanford came into the match facing daunting odds.

However, the Cardinal was able to put together one of its best performances in years, and came away with the win after a dramatic fifth game.

“We put together a really solid performance in the fifth game,” Kosty said.

“I would say they were a very talented team,” Palacios said. “More experienced and a better team than we were. During that game we just played really well. It’s really uplifting for our team that we beat a team like Alberta.”

Although the tournament championship was a team effort for the Cardinal, the team saw standout performances from several individuals.

Sophomore setter Kawika Shoji was named the tournament’s Most Valuable Player, while sophomore right-side hitter Evan Romero had more kills than any other player in the tournament. He was named to the all-tournament team along with freshman libero Jordan Inafuku.

In addition, coach Kosty made it clear that the team wouldn’t have escaped with a win against Pacific if not for the play of senior outside hitter Matt Ceran.

The tournament championship was quite the thrill for the Cardinal.

“The team feels great,” Kosty explained. “It’s a great accomplishment. The team feels really good about itself. We’re going back to scratch and working on the fundamentals that we saw needed improvement from the tournament. We’re going to build back into the team concept as we head towards our Nov. 17 tournament [the Stanford Tournament] that we’re hosting.”

“We have a chance of competing far and beyond what we did last year,” Palacios added.

The Cardinal couldn’t have started its season off any better than this weekend’s results. Coming off of last year’s disappointing 3-25 season, Stanford has already shown that it is ready to contend in the always-strong MPSF.

“We were a really young team last year, and we still are this year,” Palacios said. “A lot of the freshmen playing last year got a year of experience that made them improve dramatically. The freshmen that are playing this year are very talented and they’ve improved dramatically too. Overall, experience was the difference [this weekend].”

Stanford will be on a month-long respite from any matches before it hosts the Stanford Tournament on Nov. 17.