Morehead State volleyball's three-match home winning streak came to a close on Friday night as they fell to SIUEdwardsville in four sets. They lost 20-25, 25-18, 23-25, 20-25.
With the loss, they fall to 6-7 in OVC play and have now lost three straight coming off of a three-match winning streak.
"I wasn't too disappointed in the way that we matched up from the offensive side of things, but unfortunately our service game was the difference for us. We gave up far too many points on both our serves and receiving their serves," said head coach Jaime Gordon. "We had been really solid in those two areas, and you want to see a little bit higher execution, especially when you are playing in your home gym."
After falling in the first set, the Eagles regained momentum with a very solid second set. They recorded 14 kills and hit .393, while limiting the Cougars to just a .030 hitting efficiency, as they rolled to a 25-18 second set win.
Then in the third, the two teams battled back-and-forth throughout until SIUE opened up a 22-18 lead. But, the Eagles battled back, reeling off four straight points to even it at 22. However, after a kill by junior Sydney Schuler evened it again at 23-23, the Cougars scored the last two points of the set to win it 25-23.
In the fourth, MSU opened up an 18-14 lead on back-to-back blocks by freshmen Merideth Jewell and Maddie Fella, but SIUE ended the set and the match on an 11-2 run to win the set, 25-20, and the match, 3-1.
"In the second set I thought we did a good job of keeping the pressure on them and not giving them a free out," said Gordon. "In the fourth set, we let them out. We were up, they were struggling and called a timeout. Then we miss a serve, they get an ace off of a serve off of the net, and then all of the sudden it's tied. Against a really good team, you can't give them those breaks. When you've got them down, you need to finish it off, and we didn't tonight."
Despite the loss, the Eagles led the way in almost every statistical category. They recorded 52 kills to SIUE's 44, and hit .240 while limiting the Cougars to just .160. But, the difference was in the service game as they allowed 10 service aces while committing 10 service errors.
Jewell led the way with 19 kills, while hitting .200. Schuler added 11 kills of her own and hit .381, while senior Hannah Sigala had nine kills and hit .500.
The Eagles return to Wetherby Gym tomorrow night to face Eastern Illinois at 5 p.m. Fans that bring their ticket stub from the football game at 1 p.m. will receive a $1 ticket to the volleyball match.
