Lehigh struggles, drops road contest to Navy, 3-0

Friday, October 19

Annapolis, MD

7 p.m.

Lehigh University

16-5, 5-4PL

Navy

16-6, 8-1PL

Lehigh

Navy

Photo by: Josh Liddick

Lehigh struggles, drops road contest to Navy, 3-0

10/19/2018 11:42:00 PM | Volleyball

Box Score

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — An attempt to snap a two-match losing streak came up short for the Mountain Hawks on Friday night, falling to Navy in straight sets. The loss for Lehigh marked the first time the team was swept by an opponent this season.

Lehigh had saw Navy once before this season at Leeman-Turner Arena at Grace Hall about a month ago, falling to the Midshipmen in five sets.

This time, it was all Navy all game long, as the Mids took the match 25-10, 25-13, 25-20. Navy was by far the superior hitting team on Friday, with a .581 mark in the first set alone. The Midshipmen hit .394 as a team for the match. The Mountain Hawks struggled offensively, hitting only .140 for the match.

Defensively, Lehigh struggled for one of the first times all season long, only accumulating one block for the entire match. The lone block was tallied by senior Victoria Hemsath off the bench.

"We definitely didn't serve aggressively enough," said head coach Alexa Keckler. "Navy's defense was on point and quite honestly, I just think we were outplayed.

"We didn't come to play today, and we didn't execute where we needed to. It's much harder to block when they have the ability to run with any hitter they want, they played really well tonight."

Navy had four separate players hit over .400 for the match with Sarena Seelbach leading the way with a .476 hitting percentage with 11 kills. Patricia Mattingly tallied 36 assists with 10 digs.

The Mountain Hawks were looking for one of their players to breakout with a signature performance on Friday night, but it wasn't meant to be. Sophomore Sabrina Lancaster had 10 kills with four digs, while junior Jess Donaldson hit .333 off the bench with a kill, an ace and five digs. Freshman Alina Lam finished with 17 assists and four digs.

The loss puts the Mountain Hawks in a precarious situation at 5-4 in the Patriot League, currently neck and neck with Saturday's opponent, Loyola Maryland. The Greyhounds are looking for revenge after falling at Lehigh for the Patriot League opener a month ago. Keckler knows just how important Saturday's match is, especially in the landscape of the Patriot League tournament.

"Right now, we're just talking about fixing one thing at a time, one aspect of our game at a time," said Keckler. "Right now we can't falter, but we also can't give up.

"We have a long way to go, so we need to focus on one thing at a time and keep grinding. We need to bounce back and move past tonight. Come tomorrow we have to be more aggressive and play smarter. They (Loyola) will make adjustments from the first time they played us and will counter what we did. Everyone right now is fighting for those top four spots, we need to dig in and not get complacent."

Saturday's match will be streamed live on the Patriot League Network at 2 p.m.

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