Hosting the conference championship tournament this weekend, the Washington University volleyball team found itself on alternating ends of two dramatic, but unsuccessful, two-set comebacks.
The first came Friday evening. In the semifinal match against tournament-favorite No. 8 Emory University, the Bears nearly overcame a two-set deficit, only to fall after a hotly contested fourth set. Relegated to the third-place match the next morning, the Bears jumped out to an early two-set lead against the University of Chicago. This time, it was the Maroons who stormed back, and the Bears who held back the tide. Wash. U. had to erase a six-point deficit in the fourth set to seal the victory, earn their third-place finish and strengthen their case for the postseason.
Skyler Kessler | Student LifeIfeoma Ufondu plays in the Bears’ 3-1 win against Univeristy of Chicago. With the win, the Bears ended in third place for the UAA Championship.
Both games had their fair share of drama, but it was Wash. U’s fierce rivalry with Emory that provided the emotional crescendo of the tournament. After getting crushed in the first two sets and riding a revitalized offense to win the third, the Bears found themselves on the brink of defeat, down 24-23 in the fourth. That’s when Emory called a timeout.
In the huddle, head coach Vanessa Walby elected to keep things simple.
“We gave them a game plan of who to commit to blocking but to kind of stay with what was working and just be aggressive and fight,” Walby said.
Fighting was the easy part for a Bears team that was practically trying to will a comeback on home court.
“Personally, I’m thinking that every single ball is going to be up. I don’t care where it is on the court; I’m going after it,” senior six rotation player Rexi Sheredy said. “And our whole team had that mentality; we were going to do everything in our power to get that point.”
Walby warned that the Eagles would try to set their middle hitter after she had shredded the Bears defense all evening. She was right; the middle broke to the right, and after being met at the net with two blockers, softly tipped the ball up and over toward the vacated center court, where it landed untouched. The Emory bench rushed to court and Wash. U. was left on the losing end of another chapter in the Eagles-Bears rivalry.
Games against Emory mean a lot, and the players know it.
“We put a lot of pressure on ourselves when we play Emory,” Sheredy said. “They’re one of our biggest rivals, and someone that we always want to beat.”
For the first couple of points of the match, the Bears flourished on the big stage. A cross court kill from senior middle hitter Caroline Dupont opened up the scoring, while sophomore outside hitter Ifeoma Ufondu pelted the Emory defense with four kills in rapid succession. Before many fans could find their seats, the Bears were already up 7-2.
But then Emory called a time-out, and the momentum dial flipped the other way. The Eagles went on a 6-1 run, fueled by an offense that was rapidly finding their rhythm.
“They came out and adjusted to us, and we weren’t as well-prepared for the adjustment they made on us,” senior right side hitter Amanda Palucki said.
With the Wash. U. block struggling to slow down Emory’s attack, the Bears’ own offense began to fall out of system. An off-rhythm exchange from freshman setter Chloe Stile to sophomore middle hitter Julianne Malek was emphatically stuffed at the net to even the score at eight all.
The Eagles went on a 12-2 run to win the first set 25-15.
Things only got worse in the second set. The disarray continued as Eagle blockers were seemingly able to get a hand on every Bears attack. What they did not outright block was tipped up for an easy possession for Emory. Emory took the set 25-10, as their game hitting percentage crept into the .400s.
The third set was a different story. Where the Bears could not buy an in-system kill for most of the third set, all of a sudden, their hits were finding their way through the block and putting Emory on the defensive. After racking up 13 errors through the first two sets, the Bears were playing cleaner possessions, even coming up with their first two blocks of the night. The Bears took the third 25-21.
What changed? Apparently nothing but their attitude.
“It was a mental switch that we flipped,” Palucki said. “We had no more pressure on us. and we decided to play light out [and] give it our all because we had nothing to lose…We may have subconsciously made adjustments, but there was no specific, ‘hit this, move this, move the block this way’—it was just ourselves.”
Whatever the revitalization, it was enough to force a fourth set, but not enough to complete the comeback. Emory still outhit the Bears .285 to .167, with the Red and Green racking up 25 attacking errors to the Eagles’ 14. Three Wash. U. players tallied double digit kills with Palucki and Ufondu leading the way with a dozen each. Defensively, freshman libero Zoe Baxter had a team-high 18 digs. Malek, Palucki and Dupont all added three block assists.
Emory defeated Carnegie Mellon University in the University Athletic Association finals to earn an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. Meanwhile, Wash. U. will have to rely on an at-large bid if they want to keep their current streak of 29 straight postseason appearances alive. With the Bears currently ranked No. 14 nationally and No. 2 in the central region, they have an extremely strong—bordering on no-brainer—case to be part of the 64-team field. The selection show to determine their fate will take place Monday, Nov. 6 at 11:30 a.m.