Late rally costs Lehigh, falls to Army West Point, 3-1

Friday, November 8

West Point, N.Y.

7:00 PM

Lehigh University

13-14,6-7Patriot

Army West Point

17-9,8-5Patriot

Lehigh

Army West Point

Photo by: Brent Hugo

Late rally costs Lehigh, falls to Army West Point, 3-1

11/9/2019 12:33:00 AM | Volleyball

Box Score

WEST POINT, N.Y. — Despite a jolt of energy between the second and third sets, the Lehigh volleyball team was unable to finish the job, falling in four sets to Army West Point Friday night on the road, 3-1 (16-25, 30-32, 25-22, 9-25). With the loss, the Mountain Hawks drop below .500 in both overall and league play at 13-14 and 6-7, respectively with just three matches to play before the Patriot League Tournament.

The Black Knights opened the first set on a 6-1 run, which got out to a 10-2 lead before long, as junior Allison Garrett came into serve for the Mountain Hawks. It was a back-and-forth affair for much of the later stages of the set, before Army took the set, 25-16 and got out to a 1-0 lead.

Lehigh may have had their best chance to win in the second set, and earned set point after set point, but didn't earn the result it was looking for. Up 8-5, the Mountain Hawks dropped six straight points to trail 11-8 and then at 13-10, Lehigh won five straight capped off by an Emily Poole kill to take a 15-13 lead. Down again, 21-19 to the Black Knights, Lehigh took four straight points to lead 24-21 and have a set point looking to even the match at one apiece. However, Army West Point rallied back to tie the game at 24. The two squads traded blows well into overtime, but with the scored tied up at 30, an Emmy Barnhorst kill and an Ava Hudson attack error ended the threat and gave Army a 32-30 victory and a 2-0 lead.

The Mountain Hawks opened up the third set exactly the way they were looking for, on a 10-0 run. With a 12-3 lead, Lehigh allowed the opposition to climb back in with five straight points, trailing 12-8. Army West Point tied it up at 15 all, before the Mountain Hawks took a 23-19 lead later on. Lehigh shut the door on Army to take the final two points after the Black Knights won three in a row, to take the set 25-22 and cut the deficit in the match to 2-1.

"We definitely battled in the second set, but we had a chance to win in the second multiple times," said head coach Alexa Keckler. "We had game point multiple times and couldn't put it away.

"I'm proud that in the third set, we didn't lay down, we fought so hard and went on a 10-0 run to start the set and though we let them back in, we still were able to pull out the win."

Army West Point completely dominated the fourth set and opened it up on a 19-5 run. The Mountain Hawks managed to win just four more points before Army West Point took the set, 25-9 and the match, 3-1.

Lehigh hit just .128 as a team for the match including .219 in the first set and .150 in the victorious third set.

"We definitely showed signs that we can battle," said Keckler. "We can certainly turn it on when we want to and it was a game of maintaining tonight and unfortunately, we weren't able to do that on the floor.

Hannah Wright, Julia Pressly and Emily Poole each tallied nine kills, while Sabrina Lancaster added seven. Poole hit a team-high .292 with just two errors, adding five total blocks and two digs. Alina Lam registered 24 assists, while three players had 10 digs or more, including Lam (15), senior libero Jess Donaldson (15) and Garrett (11). Donaldson also added two service aces.

Despite the defeat, Lehigh out-blocked Army West Point, 10-7. Lauren Bright had five total blocks herself and ends the night with 403.0 total blocks for her career, becoming just the sixth player in program history to eclipse the 400-block mark.

Congratulations to senior middle blocker Lauren Bright who picked up the 400th total block of her career tonight at Army West Point. She currently is at 403 and is just the sixth player in program history to eclipse 400 or more blocks in a career. Congrats, LB!🏐🥳 #GoLehigh pic.twitter.com/QxF5JgS4IQ
— Lehigh Volleyball (@LehighVBall) November 9, 2019

Lehigh will look to get back on track on Saturday at 3 p.m. at first place Colgate in Hamilton, N.Y. The Mountain Hawks fell to the Raiders back on Oct. 11 at Grace Hall.

"Our backs are against the wall now," Keckler said. "We were in the same spot last year, it's just a matter of how much do we wanna win, how much can we focus on solid ball control and aggressive serving and our attackers climbing the floor and creating some offense.

"All those will be really important for us to be able to compete with Colgate on Saturday."

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