Box Score
Williamsport, PA — Even when playing in a gymnasium 104 miles away, Elizabethtown College continues to be a proverbial thorn in the side of the Messiah volleyball program.
The Falcons handed host Lycoming College a 3-1 (23-25, 25-19, 25-15, 25-23) loss Wednesday night, and needed just the slightest bit of help to finish as the Commonwealth Conference's second seed: Widener University needed to win at Arcadia University, and Elizabethtown needed to lose to Lebanon Valley College.
Widener took care of business against the Knights, 3-2.
But Elizabethtown ruined everything, beating LVC by a 3-1 count and catapulting to the top of the league standings.
As a result, Messiah (17-8, 5-2) dropped to the three seed, and will travel to second-seeded Lebanon Valley in next Wednesday's Commonwealth Conference Semi-Finals. Had Elizabethtown lost, the Falcons would have been the second seed through the league's tie-breaking procedures, and hosted Widener University.
It would have been the first time Messiah had hosted a Commonwealth Conference Tournament volleyball match in school history.
“What can you do?” asked Falcons' head coach Judi Tobias after hearing the news of the E'Town-LVC match-up. “The next (conference) team we have to go after is Lebanon Valley. We'll prepare as best we can, and give them our best.”
The rumors were swirling throughout the evening at Lycoming's Lamade Gymmasium, and Tobias said her staff tried as best they could from letting the Elizabethtown scoring updates infiltrate the team. But, word spread that the Blue Jays had taken an early lead over LVC, and the Falcons' play was affected.
A 23-23 score in the first set eventually equated to a 25-23 Lycoming win, as the Warriors made use of a Falcons' attack error then capitalized with a service ace.
Suddenly, the Elizabethtown-LVC score seemed a moot point.
“Our players were aware of the (post-season) scenario before the match,” Tobias said. “But they also understood that we had to win tonight to even have a chance (at finishing as the two seed). Our passing was not very good in the first set, and we talked about improving that area so we could run our offense better. We did a better job of that, good enough to win, but our passing wasn't as clean as it can be.”
Still, even without displaying its top form, Messiah coasted through the lion's share of the next three sets. A kill from sophomore Lauren Rees pushed the Falcons to an 18-10 lead in the second set, while Tobias' club finished the third frame on a 12-5 run to turn a 13-9 lead into a 25-15 final.
In the fourth set, Messiah sprinted out to a 13-6 lead behind five early kills, only to let Lycoming (13-15, 2-5) close back within a 15-14 score.
After Tobias expended her last timeout, the Warriors raced out to a 23-19 lead, and it appeared that a fifth and final set may occur.
But that's when Messiah turned up its collective play, utilizing consecutive kills from Rees and a service ace from freshman Jessica Geib to pull within 23-22. A Lycoming timeout didn't alter the momentum, as the hosts closed with three straight attack errors — two of which came via block assists from junior Emily Hall and freshman Jordyn Scheib.
Rees finished with a match-high 18 kills on 48 swings, while sophomore Lindsay King charted 13 kills on a .440 attack percentage. Junior Megan Wise scooped a team-best 14 digs, while Geib finished with 40 of the team's 49 assists from her setter position. Sophomore Ann Reck led the way with three of the team's 12 service aces.
“We did some good things, but our overall sharpness wasn't as good as it can be,” Tobias said. “We played well enough to win tonight, not as well as we can play.”
After the match was over, focus quickly shifted to the action in Elizabethtown's Thompson Gymnasium. After the Blue Jays won the first two sets by 25-20 and 25-19 scores, hopes appeared bleak for the Falcons. But Lebanon Valley came back to win the third set by a 25-20 count, and there was still hope for a league tournament match to take place in Brubaker Auditorium.
A little less than 30 minutes later, however, and the news was final: E'Town had beaten LVC by a 25-16 score in the fourth set, securing the Blue Jays' second-ever regular-season conference title.
“We were hopeful it would have worked out a different way, but you can't rely on help from outside teams,” Tobias said. “We had our chances to control our own destiny, that is for sure.”
Messiah's heartbreaking, 3-2 loss against E'Town back on Oct. 5 was surely at the forefront of Tobias' thoughts, as the Blue Jays dealt the Falcons a 3-2 defeat — by a fifth-set score of 15-12, no less — for the fourth time in the teams' last six meetings.
And while Tobias' club had a vested interest in Elizabethtown's result Wednesday, it paled to what the Blue Jays themselves were facing: A win over LVC would give E'Town the regular-season title and the top seed in the upcoming tournament, while a loss would have pushed the Blue Jays all the way down to the four seed.
“It seems like it's always like this in our conference,” Tobias said. “The four teams that make the conference tournament are always within a game or a half-game of each other.”
Before Messiah heads to post-season play at LVC, however, the team will host its final home event of the season, a five-team invitational taking place at Hitchcock Arena Friday night and Saturday. The Falcons will open against Catholic University Friday at 5 p.m., then face the University of Scranton Saturday at 10 a.m. Matches against Misericordia University (12:30 p.m. Saturday) and Penn State University-Berks (2:30 p.m. Saturday) round off the competition.
“We want to go 4-0 this weekend,” Tobias said. “Our goal is to win all of our matches, and win them as quickly as possible. There is some quality competition coming this weekend, so we think it will be a good final preparation for (conference post-season).”
