Messiah v. Moravian Box Score - Messiah v. Lancaster Bible Box Score
Elizabethtown, PA — Messiah's eight-match winning streak came to an abrupt halt at Elizabethtown College's Thompson Gymnasium Friday night, as the Falcons dropped a 0-3 (20-25, 17-25, 25-27) decision to Moravian College.
Thankfully, the team responded well.
The Falcons shook off the disappointment in handing Lancaster Bible College a 3-0 (25-13, 25-14, 26-24) loss, completing the annual Old Friends Crossover with a split decision.
Not that Messiah head coach Judi Tobias was especially pleased.
“It was an interesting night, and I'm hopeful that we can challenge ourselves a little bit as a result,” Tobias said. “We had a very honest discussion after we were finished playing. I told the team that, so far this year, we're beating the teams we're supposed to beat. We're not beating the teams that are more competitive, and we're not beating the teams that we feel we're evenly matched with. We want to have a bit more dog fight in us. I think the first way to get that is admit that we haven't played as well as we would like against those types of teams.”
Friday evening, Moravian (8-3) represented that type of a challenge, and Messiah (8-3) fell short thanks in large part to its serve receive.
“We were pretty bad in serve receive against Moravian,” Tobias said. “We use a grading system to evaluate our passes, and it was significantly lower than it usually is. Part of that was Moravian serving extremely tough, but we are better than what we showed tonight.”
Without the benefit of quality initial passes, the Falcons' offense sputtered, with a season-high five players hitting in the negative. As a team, Messiah hit at an even .000 in the first set and at .029 and .089 in the final two stanzas, failing to make much headway against the Greyhounds until the very end.
“We couldn't run much offense with our serve receive as poor as it was, and when we did run our offense, Moravian was very relentless defensively,” Tobias said.
The Greyhounds finished with 51 digs on the evening — one more than Messiah — and hit at a .240 clip overall (compared to the Falcons' .048).
Sophomore Lindsay King finished with a team-leading seven kills on a .217 attack percentage, while freshman Jordyn Scheib posted five kills. Junior Emily Hall and sophomore Lauren Rees each finished with four kills, with Hall's coming via a team-leading .273 hitting clip.
“We were very flat and not sharp against Moravian,” Tobias said. “Two of our three losses have been 0-3 (results), and that is disappointing. I was pleased with how we responded (against Lancaster Bible), but we want to get to the point where it doesn't take a loss to get us going.”
Against the Chargers, Tobias' club effectively turned the tables on the night's opening match, limiting LBC (3-7) to just 18 total kills. Rees was again at the forefront of the Falcons' offense, posting eight kills in just two sets played, hitting a ridiculous .467. Sophomore Ann Reck notched seven kills on a .387 attack percentage, while King finished with five kills and five block assists.
As a team, Messiah finished with 54 digs, 14 coming from junior libero Megan Wise and another 11 from freshman Allison Hill.
“Lancaster Bible was better than we thought they would be, and they played us very tough defensively,” Tobias said. “They are small, but they are very good at keeping the ball off of the floor. I thought we were much more ready to play than we were against Moravian. We've got to continue to work on our mental toughness, as that's going to be a key for us moving forward.”
Messiah will return to Commonwealth Conference play next, making the trip to Alvernia University Tuesday night. Match time is slated for 7 p.m.
