Moon Township, Pa. – Both teams entered today's match undefeated in Northeast Conference action, but the
Robert Morris University volleyball team exited with a 3-1 loss to Sacred Heart in a four-set battle Saturday afternoon in the Charles L. Sewall Center.
With the loss, the Colonials (9-10, 3-1) fall one game behind the undefeated conference leading Pioneers (10-6, 4-0).
Senior
Kristin Thompson and junior
Leah Dunivan each put the ball away 12 times to lead the squad in kills on .417 and .375 hitting, respectively. Junior
Arden Fisher joined them in double figures with 11 kills. Dunivan posted seven blocks (two solo, five assists) and added two digs, while Thompson assisted on five blocks. Sophomore setter
Brianna Frakes dished out a season-high 41 assists.
The third set presented a big opportunity for Robert Morris to shift the momentum in their favor, but the Colonials spent the frame trying to battle back from an early 6-3 deficit and never quite recovered. Late in the set, RMU tied the match, 18-18, and again three separate times before the set ended, but was unable to jump ahead.
Set four was a perfect display of how evenly the teams were matched, as the score tied 16 times and the lead changed on seven occasions, but the back-and-forth battle ended in favor of the Pioneers.
The Colonials return to the Sewall Center tomorrow afternoon for another NEC contest as they welcome Fairleigh Dickinson for a 3 p.m. match.
Head Coach Dale StarrOn moving forward following today's loss…The great thing about this point of the season is we get another shot at a win in the morning. I don't think anybody's going to run the table [in this conference]. There are some awfully good teams out there. Sacred Heart still has to play Long Island and they've still got to play us again. They've still got to play Bryant and Central Connecticut on the road, so we just have to play one match at a time and put ourselves in a position to be in the hunt heading into the last two weeks of the season. That's really the mentality.
On what the focus will be as the team enters the heart of conference play…We're one game behind, so now we've got to go to Sacred Heart and win, which is not an easy thing to do, but I think that they're going to drop a couple matches on the way to the end of the season and we may drop another one too. I think that we're a better team I just don't think we executed down the stretch. We should've won set three and we should've won set four. It's hard to play catch up against a team as good as they are. We're in control of set four and all of a sudden our passing isn't where it has been all day. We've got one senior on the floor and two freshmen out there, sometimes three, so we're still young.
Hold 'EmSacred Heart entered today's match leading the nation in aces per set (2.11) and ranked second in team service aces. The RMU serve receive unit limited the Pioneers to just one ace per frame.
Follow RMU volleyball on
Facebook,
Instagram and
Twitter
