The Dominican University women's volleyball team rallied for a five-set (18-25, 26-24, 27-29, 25-23, 15-9) win over the Lakeland College Muskies on Friday on the road in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. The Stars shook off a slow start and overcame 55 total errors to improve to 17-7 on the season and 8-2 in the Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference (NACC).
"I'm really proud of resilience tonight," commented Cameron Andrew, the Stars' first-year head coach. "A number of times we had our backs against the wall and we kept finding ways to fight back. One of our pre-match points of emphasis was defensive discipline. We didn't do a great job of that early but when we decided to lock in defensively in the fourth and fifth sets, we were able to play better all-around volleyball."
The Stars hit -.056 in the first set and committed double-digit errors in three of the five sets but managed to pile up 61 kills in the winning effort.
Gillian Jones led the way for the Stars, knocking down 15 kills on 61 swings while
Gabija Sinickaite and
Elin Ream added 14 and 12 kills respectively.
Anastasia Labadessa doled out 41 assists in the winning effort.
Defensively, the Stars racked up 114 digs and posted seven total blocks to limit the Muskies to 51 kills and a .126 attack percentage.
Megan Parker led the back-row effort with 26 digs while Jones and Labadessa rounded out double-doubles with 23 and 16 digs respectively.
Lauren LaVigne finished with 20 digs while
Sarah Lychock added 12 digs for the Stars. At the net, Labadessa,
Stephanie Cole and
Olivia Magnussen finished the night with three block assists apiece.
In the fifth set, after the Muskies scored five straight to go up 5-3, Dominican rattled off five straight of their own, including a pair of kills by Sinickaite and a kill by Jones to pull back in front 8-5 and never trailed the rest of the night.
"We committed the most errors we have all season tonight," continued Andrew. "While we were able to overcome that tonight, we have to be better at limiting our errors tomorrow. As we fight for seeding in the conference tournament, we have to play a cleaner match and limit the number of points we give to our opponents."
Dominican returns home to the Igini Sports Forum on Saturday, hosting the Wisconsin Lutheran College Warriors for a 6:00 p.m. NACC match. With a win, the Stars can guarantee no worse than a third place finish in conference play and secure at least one home match in the 2018 NACC Women's Volleyball Tournament.
