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Seton Hall Athletics[/caption]
The Seton Hall volleyball team fell to the Xavier Musketeers in five sets on Saturday night.
The Hall now falls to 9-10 overall and 3-4 in conference, while Xavier goes to 9-8 and 5-2 in the Big East.
Coming off of a straight sets win against the Butler Bulldogs on Friday night, the Pirates were looking to carry that momentum into Saturday’s contest. They started off doing just that, sailing smoothly through the first two sets, as they won 25-20 and 25-19 heading into the intermission.
The turning point of the match was the third set as a total of 60 points were played with seven ties and two lead changes occurring. The Hall had five opportunities to close out the match in the set, but the Musketeers answered every challenge they faced.
With the set tied at 29, Xavier was able to rattle off back-to-back winning points to extend the match. In the set, the Musketeers’ attack percentage rose to .340 from under .200 in the first two sets. The Hall’s percentage fell to .277 from .385 in the first two.
The play kept deteriorating for the Hall as Xavier grabbed strong hold of the fourth set early, racing out to 6-2 lead. The Hall made nine attack errors on a total of 48 attacks in the set, which aided Xavier to cruise comfortably to a 25-17 set victory.
Xavier raced out to an early lead in the fifth as well, forcing the Hall to play catch-up the entire set. The Pirates were never able to regain any sort of rhythm and ultimately fell 15-11 in the final set.
Junior Abbey Bessler led the charge for the Musketeers with four kills, while freshman McKena Estes contributed with five assists.
Freshman Cherise Hennigan matched Bessler with four kills for SHU and freshman setter Sophia Coffey had six assists in the match.
The Pirates will look to rebound on the road Wednesday night when they travel to Queens to take on the St. John’s Red Storm at 7 p.m.
Christian Pierre-Louis can be reached at christian.pierrelouis@student.shu.edu
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