With the luxury of staying home between matches, West Virginia played tough on Sunday afternoon but fell in five sets to Kansas State.
Both WVU and Kansas State entered the match with six wins on the year, at 6-11 and 6-9 respectively. Unlike the Mountaineers, though, Kansas State had already picked up four wins in conference play, something WVU head coach Jen Greeny has yet to earn.
The Mountaineers went up 5-1 in the first set as Kansas State struggled to limit errors early. Four straight Wildcat kills tied the set up and set the tone for the close match.
West Virginia later battled from down five in the set to force a win-by-two situation for Kansas State, which the Wildcats succeeded in, winning 26-24, thanks primarily to a bit more success offensively, marked by a five-kill advantage.
WVU adjusted defensively to decrease Kansas State’s kill count, which never went above 15 for a set after the Wildcats’ 19 kills in the first. Doing so made an immediate impact, as the Mountaineers took the second and third sets 25-22 each.
Freshman defensive specialist Eily Painter lifted the defense after the first, covering 11 digs in the match to go with libero Sydney Reed’s 19. Junior Quincey Coyle, who has taken a step back from a hitting role to being a primary server, also helped defensively with six digs to match Cassidy Tanton’s total from playing in both the front and back rows. WVU ended with 61 total digs in the match to Kansas State’s 62.
Offensively, Greeny made a change at setter in the second set, subbing usual starter Alexis Finnvold in for one of the team’s captains, graduate student Lauren DeLo, who set 12 assists in the first game. With Finnvold back in the rotation, the back row had a more reliable target to count on, and hitters benefited as well.
Outside hitter Hailey Green made her mark in WVU’s set victories, posting seven kills in each with just one error in the third set. Tanton still took the majority of Finnvold’s sets throughout the match, but Green’s impact was more valuable, made obvious by the Mountaineers’ fall as she began to lose steam in the final two sets.
Green hit three kills in the remainder of the match, all in the fourth set, and five errors total between the final two games. As a team, WVU’s kill total only went down one from the third set to the fourth, but in the fifth, the Mountaineers hit four kills and seven errors. The Mountaineers lost the fourth set 25-22 and the fifth 15-5.
West Virginia’s middles played well in the late stages of the match, with 6-foot-2 sophomore Maddy McGath covering for Green in the fourth set with five kills of her own. 6-foot-1 junior Laila Ibrahim picked up two kills in the fourth as well to go with a pair of blocks.
McGath finished the match as WVU’s most efficient hitter, with 14 kills and five errors on 28 attacks, and Ibrahim hit five kills and two errors on 13 attacks. Ibrahim also secured seven blocks with one error at the net while McGath blocked three Kansas State hits. As the server between the two, McGath also spent some time in the back row, where she tallied six digs.
The Mountaineers have one more match at home on Wednesday against UCF before getting back on the road. The two teams have already met once this season in Orlando, where the Knights swept the Mountaineers. The rematch kicks off at 7 p.m. on Wednesday at the WVU Coliseum.
Photo by Korey Moore, Blue Gold Sports
