10/21/2004 - Women's Volleyball
Volleyball Loses at American
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- American totaled an attack percentage over two hundred points higher than Navy in a three-game sweep of the Midshipmen, Thursday night at Bender Arena in Washington, D.C. The Eagles (14-6, 8-0 Patriot League) defeated the Midshipmen (15-6, 4-4), 33-31, 30-17, 30-21.
"We came away with a lot of positives tonight," said Navy head coach Mike Schwob. "In game one we did everything right except finish things off and win the game. We might have let that close loss hang with us a bit in the second game, then except for having trouble in one rotation we played well again in game three.
"Despite the loss, I don't think we took any step backward in the development of this team. We continued taking another step forward."
Navy came out strong at the start of the match, quickly jumping out to a 7-3 lead. The Eagles responded and took a 10-8 lead, but then both teams traded points until American broke open a 16-16 game by scoring six of the next seven points and taking a 22-17 lead. The Mids answered back by scoring three-straight points to narrow the deficit down to 22-20. After an American sideout, Navy went on a 5-0 run to take a 25-23 lead. American scored back-to-back points to tie the game, but Navy answered with back-to-back points of its own to take a 27-25 lead.
With the score 28-28, Navy's Ashley Musser (Jr., Industry, Pa.) committed a service error to give American a game point, but back-to-back kills by Ashley Van Hartesvelt (Sr., Breckenridge, Colo.) erased the game point and gave the Mids their own chance to win the game. A kill by Natacha Cornaz tied the game at 30-30, but then Cornaz served the ball into the net to give Navy its second game point. The Navy frontrow blocked back American's initial return of serve, then picked up a dig on its second attempt. Musser set Van Hartesvelt who hit the ball long to tie the score for the 13th time in the game. A Cutrina Biddulph service ace gave American its third game point, which it converted on a kill by Erin Allgaier following a Navy overpass of serve.
The start of game two featured five tie, with the last one coming at 11-11. American quickly rattled off five-straight points then, after back-to-back Navy points, scored another five in a row to jump in front 21-13. After an American sideout made the score 23-16, Elizabeth Maloney served five-straight points for American to give the Eagles a 28-16 lead.
Navy again played well at the start of game three, jumping out to leads of 5-1 and 8-4 until an American sideout made the score 8-5 and allowed Maloney to step to the service line again. This time she tallied six-straight points on her serve and gave American an 11-8 lead. Navy scored three-straight points to tie the score, but the Eagles would go on an 8-3 run to make it 19-14. Navy would close to 21-18 but, after an American sideout, Maloney again dropped back to serve. She once again responded with six-straight points to pot the game out of reach.
The two teams tallied nearly identical statistics on the night, except for hitting. American totaled only eight additional attack attempts than Navy did, but the Eagles knocked down 16 more kills and Navy committed nine more attack errors. American finished the night with a .286 hitting percentage, while Navy hit .052 in the match.
Van Hartesvelt led Navy with 12 kills and a .320 hitting percentage, while Allgaier led all players with 18 kills.
Navy will briefly step away from Patriot League play Tuesday when the Mids play host to Coppin State, then will resume the conference season Oct. 29 at Army and Oct. 30 at Holy Cross.
