Charleston Southern Outlasts Volleyball in Five
9/13/2007 4:12:00 AM | Volleyball
CHARLESTON, S.C. --- The Charleston Southern volleyball team placed five players in double-figure kills to edge Georgia Southern 3-2 (30-26, 30-32, 30-28, 23-30, 15-13) Tuesday evening.
The Lady Bucs improve to 6-4 while the Eagles drop to 3-9. GSU opens SoCon play Saturday at home against UNC Greensboro.
“Tonight was a very, very tough loss,” said GSU head coach Nicole McCray. “The girls worked so hard and fought really, really hard all five games. It's very difficult in rally scoring to start off 6-0 in the fifth game. We should have never started off that way.”
CSU took advantage of three straight GSU errors for that big advantage in the final game but Georgia Southern battled back to pull within one, 9-8. The teams alternated the next 11 points with Charleston Southern finally pulling out the win on a kill by Renae Popovich.
Charleston Southern held a decided .412-.222 hitting percentage in the final game, but was outhit .267-.223 for the match.
The Lady Bucs took games one and three but the Eagles rallied in each time to eventually force a deciding game five.
“The team's resiliency was huge,” added McCray. “Being on the road and fighting back in front of a hostile crowd, that says a lot about our team. It's tough, but it will all help us in the long run. Our girls continue to stay positive and realize that when we do pass, we are a great team.”
Junior Bianca Julio (Curitiba, Brazil) and freshman Sarah Gildersleeve (Naples, Fla.) led the GSU offense with 15 kills each. Senior Gorana Bacic (Richmond, Va.) and freshman Michelle Uzoh tallied 14 kills apiece.
Junior Mae Chabra (Mt. Pleasant, S.C.) had 66 assists and Julio posted a team-high 14 digs.
Nichole Diller recorded a match-high 18 kills for Charleston Southern and Popovich posted 23 digs.
After Georgia Southern scored the first three points of the match, the two teams were not separated by more than two points until a 4-0 Charleston Southern run broke a 23-23 tie.
CSU was not able to capitalize on the momentum from the end of game one as they dropped the first seven points of the second frame. But the Lady Bucs crept back into the game, thanks to strong service runs from Christina Lysacek and Popovich, and used a 13-2 run to take a 19-16 lead. Poor serve reception hurt the Eagles as Charleston Southern netted three aces during that stretch.
The Lady Bucs led by three points on seven occasions after going on top and had three chances to close the game out up 29-26. But back-to-back kills from Bacic and a CSU attack error knotted the score at 29-29.
Bacic came through again with another kill for a 31-30 advantage and another Lady Buc error gave the Eagles the game.
