With the third seed in the Atlantic 10 Tournament locked up – and no chance of moving any higher – the women’s volleyball team may have taken its foot a bit off the gas pedal in its final regular-season match.
The Colonials would fall to the Dayton Flyers (14-12, 8-6 A-10 ) Sunday in four sets (18-25, 25-10, 25-13, 28-26), finishing the game hitting just .148 percent.
“We basically kind of shut down in all areas,” said head coach Amanda Ault, who added that her team’s inability to execute basic fundamentals led to their on court struggles. “I think the biggest thing was passing, and therefore we couldn’t run our offense. We got really predictable in what we were doing.”
At the end of the first set, GW (15-13, 10-4 A-10 ) appeared to be cruising, controlling the set from start to finish, hitting .464 as a team with 17 kills on just three attack errors to win the set 25-18.
The Colonials kill totals in the following second and third sets, though, would total just 15.
After not recording a single block in the first set, the Flyers were able to make the right adjustments to halt the offensive productivity of the Colonials in the early going. In the match’s final three sets, Dayton totaled 14.5 blocks with four players finishing with at least five block assists.
The Flyers were powered by sophomore Alaina Turner, who had a career afternoon with 18 kills for Dayton. Turner’s performance was closely followed by senior Megan Campbell, who tallied 16 kills and 3.5 blocks in the four-set win.
Costly errors – a consistent theme in GW’s loses this season – also contributed to the loss for the Colonials Sunday. GW committed eight reception errors, six service errors, two blocking errors, and a ball handling error over the four sets.
Ault said that after her team played an exceptional first set, but Dayton’s ability to adjust rattled her team, who slowly lost confidence as the game progressed and shut down.
“It looked like we were out there playing by ourselves individually,” Ault said. “We weren’t doing the little things that we need to do to be successful, such as communication and getting back to the basics of what we are doing. I think we just kind of sat back or got timid in what we were doing instead of being aggressive and that allowed them to gain momentum and get comfortable and really come after us.”
Despite the errors and poor hitting performance in the final three sets of the match, the Colonials tied the Flyers at 49 total digs and posted just one fewer assist than Dayton. GW would come up just one small rally short of extending the match to a decisive fifth set.
Senior Rachael Goss, junior Kelsey Newman, and freshman Chidima Osuchukwu led the Colonials’ attack, all posting double digit kills in the match. Newman finished with 13 kills, while Osuchukwu and Goss both tallied 10 kills. On the defensive end, sophomore libero Maddy Doyle paced GW with 13 digs, while senior Jessica Burr followed with 11 digs of her own.
Ault was proud of her team’s ability to fight back in the match’s last set, which saw eight lead changes, but overall, said her team was frustrated in themselves and how they played.
“I think that they are disappointed,” Ault said. “They know how they expected the match, and in set one they played at a very high level. Then we just sat back and let those things kind of take us down.”
With just five days until the opening game of the A-10 tournament against Rhode Island, a team that recently beat GW 3-1, Ault detailed to her team the importance that every set has from here on out.
“We addressed after the game that we’ve got to work for this,” Ault said. “We can’t sit back now because if we allow ourselves to sit back again, our season is over.”
