By Ari Strait
Northeastern volleyball continued its dominance of the America East conference this weekend, defeating both Binghamton University and the University of Maryland – Baltimore County.
The consecutive 3-0 and 3-1 victories against the Binghamton Bearcats and the UMBC Retrievers extended their winning streak to 12 matches, and kept them locked in sole possession of first place.
If Northeastern (16-6, 5-0) can extend their winning ways in their upcoming weekend matches against Stony Brook University and the University of Hartford, they will have completed a clean sweep of the entire America East conference.
“We haven’t lost yet,” said coach Ken Nichols, “and we’re still putting together the pieces of the puzzle without [injured junior hitter] Jana [Kubalova]. I don’t really worry about how many wins we get in the regular season. It would be nice to control everyone, but all these teams are pretty close. It’s not our goal, our goal is to get to the national tournament.”
The Friday night victory versus the Bearcats (11-9, 2-3) began with a solid defensive Husky performance. The team held Binghamton to just six kills in 35 attempts in the first game, and, with 12 errors, the Bearcats actually finished with a negative hitting percentage, at -.171. The Huskies, meanwhile, led by junior hitter Karrin Moore’s team-high 16 kills, steamrolled to a 30-18 win.
The next two games were closer, with Northeastern taking them 30-26 and 30-28, but there was nothing fourth-place Binghamton could do to overcome the Husky game plan.
“Binghamton is not a pushover, they have some quality players. There was a major shift from the service line in the last two games, where Binghamton really went for it and we got a little soft,” Nichols said. “Their strength is in their middle, and when we serve easier, they end up with more opportunities to score in the middle. They have seven aces and only two errors, and we were five and five, which was indicative of the latter half of the match. We should have kept the pressure on from the service line.”
Senior hitter Briana Furch continues to have a breakout year, finishing with 12 kills and a .360 hitting percentage, and senior setter Kristin Ursillo successfully dished out the ball to her teammates 43 separate times, tallying the majority of the team’s 47 assists.
Ursillo, the America East leader in assists per game, repeated her standout performance in the next match, a four-game battle against the UMBC Retrievers (13-10, 2-3). Finishing with 49 assists, she helped three Huskies, in addition to herself, finish with double-digit kill totals, overcoming the thunderous 29-kill performance by the Retrievers’ junior hitter Jocelyn Teoh. Teoh leads the conference in total kills and kills per game and finished with 37 over the winless UMBC weekend.
“A little bit like New Hampshire with Alyson Coler, UMBC gave her twice as many swings as anyone else,” Nichols said. “We let UMBC set Jocelyn a bunch of balls because our serving has been just a little bit easy. We’ve got some kids who can step up, that’s the only thing I can think of we are going to spend substantial time on during the week.”
Northeastern dropped the first game of the Saturday evening match, 30-27, but the well-balanced offensive attack took back games two through four, 30-24, 30-23 and 30-25.
Junior Rebecca Holland and sophomore Larissa Adomat tied for the team lead with 17 kills a piece, and Adomat committed just one error in 29 chances for a phenomenal .552 hitting percentage. Freshman Whitney Turner contributed 11 kills of her own, and Ursillo chipped in 10 more.
Holland also paced the defense, digging out 25 balls during the match, with junior Ashley Adamczyk scooping out 21 other Bearcat attacks. In a game that had remarkably similar serving and defensive statistics, it was the recovery of the serve receive game that allowed for the Huskies to emerge victorious.
Nichols then took a moment to look forward to this weekend’s matches, especially the match against the team that knocked the Huskies out of last year’s playoffs.
“Stony Brook matches up with us well, because they’re the new style of volleyball, they are just really big,” he said. “That rattled us a little bit last year, but last year we were not nearly as balanced as we are this year. I’m interested to see what my team does in terms of payback.”
