Pirates drop the second game of the Seton Hall Classic to La Salle

Date: September 6, 2019

By: John Makuch

The Seton Hall women’s volleyball team suffered a loss to La Salle on Friday night, putting their losing streak now at five straight. This was also their second loss on the day after losing to Northern Arizona earlier in the day.

The first set started off close with both teams trading blows early. La Salle began to pull away, but the Pirates stayed in it by cutting the lead to two throughout the set. Despite the effort, La Salle proceeded to hold onto their lead and take the first set 25-17.

In the second set, La Salle got out to an early three-point lead but the Pirates began to claw back and cut it to a one point deficit, 6-5. The La Salle Explorers fought back and maintained a two-point lead Grace Rosenberg, who also had 10 assists, got a huge ace to keep that lead at two to make it 13-15, but the Explorers pulled away yet again and took the lead increasing the gap throughout. The Pirates were unable to rally as La Salle won this set 25-17.

The third set started off as more of the same with La Salle taking an early 5-1 lead to start it off. But the Pirates found their way back into the set with a fake pass by Maggie Cvelbar who finished the match with nine digs.

This brought the Explorer lead all the way down to one. Seton Hall was finally able to take a lead in this set off a huge block and got out to a 12-10 lead. This gave the Pirates a much-needed spark and they had hoped to capitalize off it. However, La Salle began to get back out to a lead for the third time and rallied to win the set and the match 3-0.

After this loss the team looks to bounce back from the losing streak and continue to develop as the team is working on their chemistry. When asked about the team and the mindset headed into tomorrow, assistant coach Simone Asque talked about how this stretch is a “process” and that the team needs to “continue to build chemistry with the younger players and to keep making progress.”

Asque also commented on how to keep the team composed heading into tomorrow’s games saying that; “It’s not a sprint it’s a marathon, we’re trying to dig for gold and improvement instead of a quick find.”

Hopefully the team continues to build that chemistry and picks up wins against their next two opponents on Saturday. The Pirates take on Binghamton at 11 a.m., on Saturday morning while the second game is against Northeastern at 7 p.m. with both games again being at Walsh Gymnasium.

John Makuch can be reached at john.makuch@student.shu.edu.

Posted in: Sports, Volleyball, WSOU