Thursday, October 23, 2014

MIDD Loses Tough One at Home on Meg's Birthday

Plymouth State may have been a little sluggish getting off the bus Wednesday night as we cruised to an easy win in set 1, 25-15 behind some good serving once again, and 12 kills and a .240 hitting %.  However, there was a lot more to come this night...

Set two was much more of a battle, with many tied scores, and lead changes that saw us fall behind in the middle of the set by as many as 5 points.  We battled back and actually took a 4 point lead at 21-17, but couldn't hold off their late run, which saw us lose 8 straight points and the set.  The third set was a nail-biter.  We got off to a rough start going down 2-6, and couldn't even tie it until 17-17.  We finally went up a couple of points, only to see them tie it, and then neither team could quite finish.  There were many great rallies, and many long rallies where no one was hitting the ball hard, we just rolled it over the net to each other, but we eventually pulled out that set 29-27, and thought we were getting at least a little momentum back...

Not so, I guess.  The fourth set was very close again with many tie scores, and lead changes.  We tied it at 19-19, and got behind 20-22 before a service error and a blocked ball ended the set in favor of the "bad guys."  So, on to a fifth set, which was more of the same.  We got down by a couple, we went up by a couple, and we traded points with them to the tune of being tied 13-13 before two errors by us gave them the match.  It was a very tough loss.  We feel like we just didn't maintain our level of intensity and attention to detail with our play.  I'm still looking for some positives in the match, which I know there were some...so I'll try to highlight some of the statistical ones here:

Piper had a pretty good night with 10 kills, a .389 hitting %, and 7 block assists.  Olivia had two service aces, 9 kills, and both she and Hannah had 5 block assists each.  Becca was our main offensive machine with 19 kills, two shy of the match high by the opponent's OH.  Charlotte and Melanie each had 4 block assists as this could very well have been our best blocking night (although, I'm not convinced the stats are totally correct on that front?!)  Charlotte also posted 10 kills, and Lizzy tied their libero for a match high 36 digs, as she was all over the court digging balls.

We're hoping to regroup this weekend.  We certainly didn't give Meg a good birthday win, but hopefully she did something fun today!

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