Pirates Fall Short in Five-Set Match vs Xavier, 3-2

Published: Friday, October 11, 2024

by Anthony Collins

SOUTH ORANGE, N.J - In a Big East Matchup against the Xavier Musketeers (5-10), the Seton Hall Pirates (7-9) were looking for a win to rebound their slow start in conference play. Unfortunately, they fell short in a back-and-forth five-set game, losing three sets to two.

In the first set, it was Seton Hall that completely dominated in all categories. Maddie Klungel, who has been incredible all season with putting her players in scoring positions, continued to set up for her teammates. Up front and attacking, players like Perri Lucas and Reagan Merk were unstoppable. Xavier looked helpless trying to do anything they could to contain the Hall's spikes, but the Hall won the set easily by a score of 25-14.  

However, in the second set, the Pirates found themselves repeatedly falling behind, as Xavier’s Emma Grace found her rhythm with racking up services aces. It was all too overwhelming for the Pirates to overcome, and they lost the set 25-20.

The third set once again saw the Pirates start flat, as they fell into an 8-0 hole. Grace ignited this run for the Musketeers, as she again came up big with kills and digs of her own. The Pirates had a mini comeback to keep the set close, as they extended a lot of plays courtesy of diving digs on their end. As Xavier got closer to set point, they began to feel the Hall’s pressure, as both teams were going back and forth and not giving up on any play. But ultimately, the Musketeers struck gold first, and were able to close it out 25-20 again to take a 2-1 lead.  

As the fourth set began, there was still no quit in this slightly shorthanded Pirate team, with players like Gwen Adler and Rylee Nelson out for today. A key player who stepped up was Laila Wallace, who was huge in this set by collecting blocks of her own, as well as was aggressive both on offense and defense.  Reagan Merk is another name that came up big, with clutch kills at the end of this set. The power from that duo helped push the Pirates to a 25-20 set four win, and the game would now come down to the fifth and final set.

But the Musketeers cleaned everything up, with a couple of service aces once again by Grace making it difficult for the Pirates to keep up. The difference maker in this set was that Seton Hall gave up too many attacking errors, in which Xavier capitalized on, with players like Caroline Speelman getting kills at the right times for her team. Speelman ended up having a career-high 18 kills tonight. Xavier pushed ahead and beat the Pirates 15-10, to take the entire match three sets to two.

When it’s all said and done, slow starts killed the Pirates. In the three sets they lost, they allowed Xavier to go on a huge run in the beginning that was too much for The Hall to come back from.

The Pirates did show fight, as they had a lot of clutch digs to extend plays. Yet they could not finish when they needed to, which was the biggest factor of this game. Seton Hall will look to come back from this and get themselves a much-needed win this Sunday at home against DePaul. 

Anthony Collins can be reached at anthony.collins@student.shu.edu. 

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