Pirates suffer second straight five set loss in Xavier match

Date: November 10, 2019

By: Justin Morris

The Seton Hall women’s volleyball team’s season took another turn for the worse Saturday night at Walsh Gymnasium. The match was the third straight sporting event held at the site but volleyball was unable to complete a sweep of the day for the Pirates, after both the women’s and men’s basketball teams took home double-digit wins.

The loss was not due a lack of effort, however. The team has been on a downtrend recently, and the trend was not at all made easier by the number of players who succumbed to the injury bug. Head coach Alison Yaeger highlighted postgame, at the times the Hall will field a lineup of all freshman, and half of the roster is in just their first year of Division-1 competition. On top of injury, general fatigue marred the Pirates’ last few outings. They’ve fared poorly in conference play, winning just two of the 13 games they had played entering the Xavier game.

Their last win came in early October, an impressive 3-0 sweep of Georgetown to knot their conference record at 2-2, and just as it looked as if they might carry some momentum from the win into the remainder of their schedule, they hit a major bump in the road.

That bump came in the form of eight straight losses, including three consecutive 0-3 shutouts, and a blown 2-0 set lead against Butler that was usurped by the Bulldogs as they came back to take a stunning third set Friday night. They would have little time to dwell on the loss though, and would have to air out their frustrations back on the court the very next night vs. visiting Xavier. It seemed though, as if another game was just what they needed, and all of their pent up aggression poured out during the first two sets against the Musketeers.

Play was back and forth for the most part, but the Pirates were clearly the superior team early on, flexing their muscle in attacking the nets at close range, and blocking a good portion of Xavier’s kill attempts on defense. Their height in the middle, namely Julia Wilkins and Amanda Rachwal, led the scoring charge, while season kills leader Haylee Gasser added a few timely heart-crushing spikes to solidify solid victories for the Hall in both of the matchup’s first two sets 27-25 and 26-24, with both going into overtime play.

Their energy had fizzled by round three though, and Xavier was able to cruise back smoothly into the matchup, first utilizing multiple attack errors to sneak past the Pirates 25-21 in set three, and then opening their margin in set four 25-15.

Overtime play was the manta of the day, and so it was only fitting that the fifth and final set ended up the same. With the score tied at 14, both sides scrapped to an even 18 before a timeout. Afterwards, Jayda Carlton scored two clutch points for Xavier, and sent her and her teammates out of South Orange with a huge conference win.

The loss dropped the Pirates to a 7-21 overall record on the year. Xavier held comfortable margins in both kill percentage (.231 to .176) and total kills (80 to 63), while senior captain Maggie Cvelbar led the Pirates in assists per usual, registering 31. Wilkins’ 19 kills were the most from the Hall by far.

Seton Hall will have two straight bouts against St. Johns Friday and Sunday. “Just keep fighting,” were the postgame words from a visibly tired Yaeger on the outlook for the rest of season. And keep fighting, for now, is all they can do.

Justin Morris can be reached at justin.morris@student.shu.edu.

Posted in: Sports, WSOU, Volleyball