Gasser's Career Night Holds Off Providence in Five Sets

Date: October 5, 2019

By: Joe Cammarota

Seton Hall volleyball grinded out a five-set win against Providence on Friday night to improve to 5-11 and the Pirates won their first conference game. The young Pirates have been struggling this year, but they were led in this game by senior Haylee Gasser’s career-high 23 kills.

The Pirates started the match on the wrong foot, falling in the first set to Providence 25-21, while also only having a total attack (TA) percentage of .156 in the set. In comparison, the Friars were able to take control early .386 TA in the first set.

This put the young Pirates on the back heel to start but led by Gasser and Maggie Cvelbar, the Hall fought back. They fought on by winning their next two sets. Seton Hall’s head coach Allison Yaeger spoke on how important the leadership role Gasser played in this victory, “I’m so proud of Haylee, we’ve been waiting so long for somebody to step up and kind of take the ‘man’ role of this team and Haylee did that tonight. We could not have won without Haylee.”

Seton Hall’s second set went better as they were able to even it up with a 25-23 set victory, taking advantage of the poor TA percentage of the Friars, who only converted on .188% of their attacks in the set. The Hall on the other hand was able to convert .235% of their chances, not great but was a step in the right direction which gave them confidence throughout the rest of the match.

An underrated performer of the night was senior Cvelbar. Not only was she a leader for the team with Gasser, but she led the match in assists with 42, 11 more than the next closest player. Gasser gave a lot of credit to Cvelbar for helping her set her personal record, “It felt really great. I could not have done it without my team. Maggie Cvelbar, my setter just fed me the ball tonight, it was just awesome, we were just in sync with each other.”

In the third set, the Pirates were able to take control of the match with a second straight 25-23 set victory. This was not due to their team high 3.85% TA that set, but also due to freshman libero Raygan Murray. Murray had a match high 15 digs, and those certainly helped as Providence also put up a high TA of .400%. The fourth set went in favor of Providence, as the young Pirates could not put away their first conference win yet. Neither Providence nor Seton Hall played particularly well during this set, with Providence winning it 25-21.

It all came down to the fifth and final set, with the home crowd cheering the Pirates on, Seton Hall was able to win the fifth set and the match with a 15-13 set victory. Coach Yaeger spoke about the home court advantage, “We really needed this. We love playing in front of our home crowd, it’s really fun.”

The Pirates are back in action on Saturday as they take on Creighton at 7:00 p.m. in Walsh Gymnasium.

Joe Cammarota can be reached at joseph.cammarota@student.shu.edu.

Posted in: Sports, WSOU, Volleyball