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MIAMI – An off night for Kennesaw State on offense led to a 3-1 setback (23-25, 25-19, 25-23, 25-23) at FIU on Friday in Conference USA volleyball action from the Ocean Bank Convocation Center. The loss dropped the Owls to 6-5 in league play, and 9-13 overall.
STAT OF THE GAME: KSU hit .353 in the first set, but did not top .225 in the following three, finishing at just .217 for the match. FIU meanwhile finished with a .294 hitting percentage.
THE RUNDOWN – The opening set was back and forth, and FIU held a two-point edge late at 20-18. A 3-0 spurt put KSU back ahead, but the Panthers came back to tie the game at 23-23. A kill from freshman
Kiernan Stamey and an ace from classmate
Kaeley Walz ended the set, giving KSU a 1-0 edge. The second set saw a 7-1 surge put the Panthers up 11-6 and KSU came no closer than three the rest of the way, falling 25-19 to tie the match at 1-1.
The next two sets could have gone either way. The teams were tied at 23-23 in set three when two straight FIU kills gave the home team the win and a 2-1 advantage. Set four meanwhile had the Owls up early 13-6. KSU led 16-10 when the Panthers changed the game with a 9-3 spurt to tie the match at 19-19. The Owls would go ahead 22-20, but only scored one more point, with the Panthers sealing the set 25-23 to claim the victory.
POSTGAME QUOTES
KSU HEAD COACH KEITH SCHUNZEL
"Anyone who thought this weekend was going to be a cakewalk because they looked at win-loss records, didn't look closely at FIU's schedule and the scores of those games. FIU played eight Power conference teams in non-con play, plus a top-25 Dayton squad. Then in conference play they opened up with WKU, took them to five sets twice, then played UTEP and New Mexico State, who are all the three best teams in our league. So we absolutely knew coming in to this weekend that this team would be good.
To our team's credit they heard the message and we came ready to play tonight and played a great first set and got up 1-0. Throughout the match I thought we did some really nice stuff. Olivia (Burrage) dominated again through the middle, and I thought our serve receive held up very well for the most part.
But the ends of sets 3 and 4 were the most disappointing for me, and were where I thought we lost the match. Set 3 we gave up a number of unorganized and hesitant defensive transition opportunities watching some balls that we dug fall to the ground. And in set 4 we were up by three points late and didn't have the confidence or execution to shut the door. When those things happen on the road against good teams you tend to lose and tonight we did."
NOTES
-Burrage led the Owls with 15 kills and a .542 hitting percentage.
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Manu Johnsen was next with 14 kills.
-Lead Freeman had a team-high 13 digs, Walz finished with 23 assists and
Maggie Byrd posted five blocks.
NEXT TIME OUT: The teams close out the weekend series with a 1 p.m. contest on Saturday, in a game streamed live on ESPN+.
