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PITTSBURGH, Pa. – The Kennesaw State volleyball team pushed No. 13 Pittsburgh to the edge Friday morning in the Panther Invitational opening match, but Pitt would hang on to win in five sets, 23-25, 26-24, 25-16, 20-25, 15-7, to hand the Owls their first loss of the season.

Heading into the match, Pitt had only dropped two sets all year, one to No. 24 Cal Poly and one to Oklahoma.
 
How it happened: The Owls (6-1) traded points with Pitt (7-0) to open the match until a kill from the Panther's Kayla Lund opened a 5-1 run to break the deadlock and give UP an 11-7 lead.  
 
KSU eventually tied the match, 17-17, following three straight errors from Pitt. The Owls jumped on the Panther miscues to gain a 23-22 edge before senior Sydni Shelton put the set away with back-to-back kills to give KSU the opening set victory.
 
Set two began much the same way with both squads going back-and-forth. Neither team could break through to gain separation as a kill from senior Liesl Engelbrecht tied the set up at 20. The Owls broke through thanks to back-to-back Pitt errors and kills from sophomores Lauren Chastang and Quin Sutphin to earn set point 24-21.
 
After a KSU timeout, Pitt came out fired up, rattling off the next five points, three of them blocks, to come back and win the set, 26-24.
 
Following the break, Pitt continued its momentum from the end of the second set picking up three early blocks on the way to a 12-5 lead. The Panthers kept KSU at bay the rest of the set, hitting .556 percent to win, 25-16, and take a 2-1 lead.
 
The Owls bounced back in the fourth set with an early 5-2 lead. Pitt pulled back even, 12-12, but a kill from Maddie Jones sparked a 3-0 run to gain a bit of separation. Jones would come up big again with back-to-back kills as KSU closed out the set on a 6-2 run to force a deciding fifth set.
 
Jones recorded six of her 14 kills in the fourth set, and 10 kills over the final two sets.
 
The fifth set was a grind early on as Pitt managed to get the edge over KSU, 8-6, at the switch. The Panthers then took control scoring seven of the final eight points to win the set, 15-7, and the match, 3-2.
 
Notable: Three Owls finished the match with double-digit kills … Chastang led the team with 15 kills, her fifth straight match in double-figures … Jones recorded a season-high 14 kills and Shelton logged 11 kills … junior Lexi Broadwater tied her career-high with 51 assists while adding four kills and two blocks … Engelbrecht recorded five blocks against Pitt, two solo, marking the fourth time in the last five matches she has had four or more blocks … sophomore Karlee Groover and freshmen Bri Becerra both logged double-digit dig totals with 22 and 11, respectively, just shy of their career-highs of 24 and 12 … KSU's 10 blocks marks the fourth time this season the Owls have recorded 10 or more blocks.
 
Quotable: Head Coach Keith Schunzel
On the up-and-down play of the match...
"Such mixed feelings about that one. We got ourselves up one set to zero and 24-21 in the second set to go up 2-0 and didn't finish, which is obviously very frustrating. But the GREAT thing is after the getting crushed in the third set we came back and played a fantastic fourth set to push it to five. Really proud of that mental and physical effort by our team when the easy thing to do would have been to wilt away in the fourth."

On pushing a top-15 team to five sets...
"The days in this program of feeling satisfied about pushing a ranked opponent to five sets are long gone, so we have a lot of mad players and coaches in our locker room, which is what you want. Proud as heck of our team. We'll rest and recover and come back firing again tomorrow."

Up next: The Owls won't have time to dwell on today's result as they continue tournament play with two matches Saturday. KSU opens the day against Dayton at 11 a.m., before squaring off against No. 12 Washington in the nightcap at 7 p.m.