The William and Mary volleyball team pushed Hofstra to the brink on Friday night, before falling 3-0 to the CAA's only undefeated team. The Tribe moves to 5-17 on the year and 1-6 in CAA, while the Pride improved to 19-2 overall and 7-0 in conference play. The match was W&M's "Spike Out Breast Cancer" night, and the team raised a record total of more than $2,500 to support Beyond Boobs!, a Williamsburg-area breast cancer support organization.
Box ScoreJunior captain
Dessi Koleva (Torrance, Calif.) led the way for W&M on the night, scoring 10 kills to go with five digs and a pair of blocks. Senior
Liz Brown (Ellicott City, Md.), fresh off of her 500th career kill Tuesday against Liberty, reached another milestone tonight with her 100th career block. Brown also had nine kills in addition to her block. Redshirt-sophomore
Michelle Heath (Rustburg, Va.) had five kills and seven digs, and also picked up a block. Rounding out the offensive honorees, setters
Austyn Ames (Wichita, Kan.) and
Stephanie Paul (North Bethesda, Md.) both had a kill, with Ames adding 14 assists and three digs, and Paul 12 assists and eight digs.
W&M also had a number of defensive standouts. Freshman
Sara Zumbach (Franklin, Tenn.) had a match-high 14 digs to go with three assists, and classmate
Paige Humphrey (Oak Hill, Va.) led all players with five blocks. Junior
Mallory Brickerd (Ashburn, Va.) provided four more blocks, and classmate
Carolyn Albright (Raleigh, N.C.) added to her season total with two stops of her own. Albright is now just 11 blocks away from 300 in her career.
The first set was a battle of runs, beginning with Hofstra going up 9-4. Coming out of the early timeout, Heath got the Tribe going with a kill and Brown had two more, leading W&M to a 6-1 run that tied the set at 10-10. After the Pride had built themselves back out in front, 19-14, the senior Brown took the team on a ride again, scoring twice in the span of four rallies to force a Hofstra timeout at 20-17. It didn't help, as Albright paired with Koleva and Brickerd on back-to-back points for blocks, chopping the deficit to one at 20-19. From there, the two teams traded single points back and forthwith W&M never quite able to get that last equalizer before Hofstra won, 25-23.
The second set was close all throughout, all the way to a 25-21 Hofstra win, with the Tribe earning a 9-3 run in the middle of the set before the Pride put together a big run of their own at the end. In the third, the visitors again used a big run to go up six, 17-11, aftera 10-10 tie, and though the Tribe scrapped and chipped its way back to 20, Hofstra was able to hang on for the 25-20 win.
William and Mary's Homecoming Weekend continues Saturday, hosting Northeastern at 7 p.m. in Kaplan Arena.
