In the final set of the Penn State women's volleyball team's match against Ohio State Wednesday night, the Nittany Lions found themselves facing a tied score of 20-20.
A fourth touch by Katie Dull gave the Lions the lead. That play was shortly followed by three consecutive kills by Megan Hodge, Arielle Wilson and Darcy Dorton to finish the match, allowing Penn State to win 3-0 (25-21, 25-11, 25-20).
Despite the Lions' strong finish, the team was not happy with its performance in the third set. Overall, Penn State coach Russ Rose said he was not pleased with his team's play throughout the match.
"I thought there were two games where I didn't think we played well, and the third game was very disappointing," Rose said. "The third game, everything was bad, and it was a big disappointment in my mind."
In the third set, the Lions had a hitting percentage of only .234 and had a match-high seven attack errors.
Junior middle hitter Blair Brown said that set was uncharacteristic for the team and it was reacting to plays instead of being proactive. She said unusual plays by the Buckeyes (17-7, 5-6) resulted in a change in tempo for the Lions, which threw them off their gameplan.
"I think Ohio State went crazy and was doing crazy things," junior libero Cathy Quilico said. "We went and did that same thing instead of playing our game. We did crazy things."
While Penn State (23-0, 11-0) was disappointed in the final set, they were pleased with how it competed in the second game. In that set, the Lions had a hitting percentage of .391 with only two attack errors.
Quilico and Brown agreed that the second set is how they should be performing all the time, and that is a bright spot they can take away from this match.
"I thought we were doing well in the second game especially," Brown said. "Everything was perfect tempo. I really thought the second game was the most characteristic of how we want to play every set."
However, finishing the match with an overall attack percentage of .333 -- low for the usually powerful Lions -- and 13 errors, Rose and his team still walked away disappointed.
"It's nice to win when you don't play your best," Rose said. "I thought we were ready to play. We didn't look as sharp as I would've liked and maybe we'll do better next time."
