Sept. 12, 2008
Box Score
Buffalo, N.Y. - The University of Maryland Eastern Shore's (UMES) women's volleyball team hasn't quite grown accustomed to this tough schedule they are playing. Today was proof of that as the University at Buffalo took the second match of the Ramada Invitational with a 3-1 (25-19, 26-24, 19-25, 25-18) decision over UMES.
The Lady Hawks (3-5) start the season with 17 straight matches away from home and many of those contests are in tournaments where they will face some much tougher teams than they did last season. Still, Head Coach Don Metil knows these matches will pay dividends when conference play and the tournament roll around.
"We don't play home until October 3," said Metil. "It is tough, playing these teams and not even having been home yet, but it will make us tougher and more confident. Today we should have beaten, or at least competed better, with Buffalo. We are ranked higher than they are but they are a team that is playing well, on their home floor and seeing us after five grueling sets earlier in the day."
Metil is referring to the 3-2 heartbreaking loss earlier in the tournament to Butler, a match where UMES had a 2-1 lead before Butler tied it and eventually won.
UB (3-5) had no sympathy for the visiting Hawks as several Bull players set career highs. Lindsey Schlegel (54 assists), Kristin Bignell (16 kills) and Dani Silvers (14 kills) all had career bests. Rachel Beigelow added a dozen kills and 12 digs while Lauren Fensten had a match-high 13 digs and six UB players served up an ace.
UMES never really found a rhythm. Whitney Johnson (Prince Frederick, Md./Univ. at Albany) led the Hawks with 12 kills while Samantha Pimental (Corvallis, Ore./Corvallis HS) served up a match high four aces. The best performances came from the middle for UMES as middle blockers Samantha Chukwura (Brooklyn, NY/Bayside HS) and Thonya Joseph (Bridgetown, Barbados/Clarendon Coll.) tallied nine kills each. They were impressive when they swung as Chukwura had 18 attacks and two errors to hit .389 while Joseph only swung 12 times, but committed just one error for a .667 attack percentage.
The problem lied with the rest of the team as they combined to only hit .239, not a bad average but Buffalo was better at .257. The problems came in the first and fourth sets where UMES only hit .143 and .156 respectively. The set the Lady Hawks won saw them hit .429 and in the second frame, where they lost 26-24, they hit a respectable .241.
"When we were off, we were really off," said Metil. "As I said after the Butler loss, a big part of this is mental; we get down on ourselves too quickly. In the third set we started well and got even better. When we start down, we dig ourselves even deeper."
That third set saw UMES up by as many as six on several occasions. They jumped out to a 9-4 lead on a UB error and pushed that to 15-10 on a Joseph kill. They closed the set with three straight kills from Christina Estebane' (El Paso, Texas/Midland Coll.), Joseph and Johnson.
In the second set, the Hawks nearly pull off the win. In a set that saw eight ties, UMES appeared in great shape; they were up 24-23 after an Estebane' kill. Silvers tied it at 24 with a kill of her own and the Lady Hawks proceeded to commit two straight attack errors to give UB the 26-24 win.
The loss dropped the Hawks to 3-5 while the Bulls went to the same record, 3-5. UMES concludes the tournament tomorrow with a 1:00 p.m. match against Maine, who lost to Butler 3-0 earlier on the day.
