Box Score
Grantham, PA — Messiah senior outside hitter Amy Mattie provided a sense of levity late in Tuesday's match-up with Arcadia University in Brubaker Auditorium.
Serving for the Falcons in the midst of what would be an incredible 9-0 run to hand the Knights a 3-1 (21-25, 25-16, 25-11, 25-21) MAC Commonwealth Conference defeat, Mattie turned to her bench and said, “I'm nervous.”
It didn't show.
Mattie helped Messiah (10-5, 2-2) erase a 16-21 deficit in the fourth and final set, serving eight of the Falcons' final nine points to claim a 25-11 close-out win for the ages. Playing with a heavily wrapped leg and not having practiced since tweaking a quad muscle in Saturday's loss at Philadelphia Biblical University, Mattie tossed in a pair of service aces to squelch any butterflies that may have crept into her stomach.
“There was a lot of good, mature things that happened in that run of points,” Messiah head coach Judi Tobias said. “We did not want to play a fifth game tonight.”
It appeared that Messiah would need no such extension earlier in the evening's activities, as Tobias' team got its act together following a 21-25 loss in the first set. A ridiculous .344 attack percentage in the second and a sputtering effort from Arcadia in the third helped the Falcons to a commanding 2-1 lead, a trend that manifested into a 4-1 Messiah advantage in the fourth stanza.
Playing for its conference well-being, Arcadia (7-11, 1-3) responded. A quick, 5-0 run from the Knights made the score 6-5, Arcadia, while the team would slowly eek its way out to the aforementioned 16-21 advantage.
It was at that point that Tobias spent her last timeout of the set, hoping for a dramatic change in all aspects.
“A lot of times, you call timeout just to slow the other team down, just to try to stop the bleeding,” Tobias said. “During that timeout, we actually had some adjustments we needed to make technically.”
Following a 9-0 run to end the match, Tobias appeared genius. Messiah forced Arcadia into an error to regain the serve, and Mattie finished things off in style. Jump serving on each of the match's final eight points, Mattie watched classmate Trisha Trosper record a kill before putting down a pair of aces, pulling Messiah to a 21-21 tie. Another kill from Trosper and a tip kill from junior Sam Bradley gave the Falcons their first lead (23-21) in the set since an 11-10 difference, while Bradley followed with a solo block that put the Brubaker crowd into an uproar.
When senior Leslie Heffner found the floor off an attack from the back row, Messiah's six players on the court glanced to one another before celebrating. Did we really just score nine unanswered points to close out a match?
“It's rare to do that, yes, but even more so against a conference opponent that used two timeouts during that run,” Tobias said. “To me, that's the most impressive thing. We always tell (our servers) after a timeout, just get it over and in. We're not trying to get specific. Amy was just awesome.”
Mattie — who finished the night with three service aces, 16 digs and eight kills — was the brightest star late, but there were others. Trosper took advantage of a favorable match-up to help Messiah back on its feet in the second set, collecting four of her eight kills in that stanza.
“Trisha played well for us, especially in the second (set),” Tobias said. “I think after losing the first set, we decided we weren't going to let them have their way. I told the team that defense was their strength, and we'd have to stay after them in order to get points.”
Following the second set loss, the Knights became a shadow of themselves in the third, recording five of their nine serve receive errors and hitting a -.069 percentage in a humiliating 25-11 defeat. Arcadia regrouped in time to necessitate Messiah's late heroics, but it wasn't enough to thwart them.
Heffner paced the Falcons' attack with 11 kills on a .150 clip, while Bradley hit .318 placing eight attacks for points. She and freshman Brynn Lettieri (five kills) each recorded a solo block, with Bradley charting two block assists.
Senior Meghan Morrissey was on fire in the back, coming up with 29 digs. Junior Lauren Bourdon handled the entirety of the setting duties in the win, posting 36 assists with no ball handling errors. She also added 10 digs, as did Heffner.
“Meghan had a great match,” Tobias said. “She was extremely accurate with her passing and took command of the back court, which enabled us to run our offense. This was a big win for us, and a much needed win beyond our win-loss record.”
With the victory, Messiah remains in the top half of the MAC Commonwealth standings. Arcadia, meanwhile, slips to sixth place with the loss. Both teams entered the evening with 1-2 league records.
Messiah will next take a hiatus from conference play, traveling to Manhattan to play three matches in two days. The Falcons will face off against Rutgers University-Newark Thursday at 3 p.m., and will take part in the Baruch College Tri-Match Friday.
