Volleyball falls to Xavier 3-0

Date: September 22, 2018

By Dalton Allison

On Saturday night, the Seton Hall Pirates volleyball team dropped their second Big East game as they dropped to the Xavier Musketeers 3-1 at Walsh Gymnasium.

Following their 3-0 defeat to Butler the night before, the Pirates came out firing in the first set. This fire helped them to get out to an early 6-1 lead. Scoring points during this early run was Caitlyn Koska, who ended the night with a total of 11 kills. Back to back attack errors from Laura Grossman helped the Pirates further extend their lead to 20-12. There was no looking back in that set, as the Pirates ran away with the first set by a score of 25-14.

From the second set on, it was a struggle for the Pirates to gain any sort of momentum. After Xavier broke out to an early 3-0 lead in the second set, Seton Hall had a hard time recovering. Mackenzie Mangette was a force for the Musketeers from the service position, as one of her five aces on the night put Xavier ahead of the Pirates 9-6. Attack errors would be a problem for the Pirates all night long, and a crucial error by Haylee Gasser placed the Musketeers ahead of the Pirates 18-11. This lead would prove to be insurmountable, and the Musketeers would take the set 25-20.

One Pirate that didn’t struggle on the night was senior Abby Thelen. In fact, Thelen was undoubtedly the best play on either side of the court. She displayed her efficiency by registering 19 kills and only one attack error. Her efforts weren’t enough for the third set however, and the Pirates fell again to the Musketeers 25-20.

A large part of being victorious in the matchup was scoring the first point of the set. The team that scored the first point in the set came out victorious three out of four times. The fate of the Pirates was all but sealed when they let Xavier come out to an early 3-0 lead in the fourth set. Seton Hall was persistent however, and they eventually worked the score back to 13-12. After the Musketeers went on a scoring run, they were up 17-13 on the Pirates. That is when Thelen, in a last ditch effort to will her team to victory, registered the next six kills for the Pirates, pulling them to 21-20. The Herculean effort from Thelen was not enough however, and the Pirates eventually fell 25-22 in the fourth set, and 3-1 overall.

Following the loss, the Pirates now move to 0-3 in conference play, and 5-11 overall. They travel to Georgetown next to take on the Hoyas on Wednesday September 26^th at 5 pm.

Dalton Allison can be reached at dalton.allison@student.shu.edu.

Posted in: Sports, Volleyball, WSOU