By Felipe Fontes -- STAFF WRITER After a dominant 5-1 start to conference play, the Hofstra volleyball team has now lost three straight matches following their loss in Charleston on Friday night.
This was the Pride’s second loss to the Cougars this season, with the first coming in the conference opener when the Pride let a 1-0 set lead slip to lose 3-1.
On Friday however, despite the hard fought third set where the two teams battled it out until the 30th point, the Pride were unable to take any sets in an uninspired 3-0 defeat.
The set scores were 13-25, 18-25, and 28-30.
Charleston was able to take advantage of a night where the offense for Hofstra wasn’t really clicking. In the first set the Cougars surmounted the Pride’s uncharacteristic .069 attack percentage with a .381 percentage of their own.
Seeming to connect on all cylinders in the first set and winning by a solid 12 points, the Cougars continued their run into the second by raising their attack percentage to an even more impressive .414%.
This dominant attack overshadowed Hofstra’s own improvement on the offensive end. The Pride raising their attack percentage to .333 and cutting its errors in half wasn’t enough to break even in the game’s second set, but did narrow the loss margin to seven points.
The third set saw both teams commit a combined 23 errors in an extremely gritty stanza that stretched out until the 30th point.
Alongside the myriad of errors, neither team had any success connecting on their attacks, as Hofstra produced a 0% attack percentage while the Cougars were held in the negatives.
Despite their best shot at taking a set, the third stanza proved it just wasn’t the Pride’s day, as it was unable to take advantage of a sloppy performance on the other side of the court.
In the loss, Laura Masciullo was credited with 10 kills, stretching her game streak with double digit kills to five.
Defensively, junior Michela Rucli posted six blocks, while Ivania Ortiz and Caylie Denham added 9 digs a piece in the losing effort.
Madison Kennedy led the way on Charleston’s end of the court, posting a game high 14 kills. Setting her up for the majority of those kills was Allison Beckman, who also ended with a game high 29 assists in the match.
With the loss, Hofstra now holds a 5-4 record and falls to the middle of the pack in the conference, currently sitting in fifth place.
The Pride will look to end this losing skid and get back to their winning ways as they stay on the road to face the UNC-Wilmington Seahawks.
First serve will take place at 12:30 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 22.