Junior Michelle LeSouder had a match-high 30 kills in a win over Marist Sunday.

NIAGARA UNIVERSITY, N.Y. – For the second-straight match, the Niagara University volleyball team (4-13, 2-0) went five games to earn a 30-17, 26-30, 30-25, 28-30, 20-18 victory over Marist College (10-10, 1-2) Sunday at the Gallagher Center on the Monteagle campus. The win marks the first time since 2001, when the Purple Eagles beat Canisius and Marist, that Niagara has opened the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference season undefeated.

"We kept our composure until the very end," Niagara head coach Rocco Lucci said. "We had a scouting report on them and we did everything to a ‘T.’ We knew they’d run a lot of balls to the right side and a lot of slides and we put up a solid block and played defense behind it. We were mentally focused on stopping their attack. We planned to give our outside hitters a lot of balls and they came through."

Niagara was led by junior Michelle LeSouder with 30 kills, five errors, 69 attempts for a .362 hitting percentage. Erin Graham had a double-double with 22 kills and 17 digs. She also had four aces. Freshman Raelean Rush (Amherst, N.Y./Sweet Home) had 13 kills and 20 digs, junior Karen Simpson 12 kills and a .407 hitting percentage. Junior Jennifer Hansford collected 64 assists and 17 digs, while classmate Micole Daluisio (Lancaster, N.Y./Lancaster) had a match-high 29 digs. Freshman Aris Allen had a career- and match-high six aces.

Marist was led by Sally Hanson with 19 kills and Jaime Kenworthy with 17. Three Red Foxes were in double-digits in digs.

Niagara hit .282 for the match, including .424 in the fifth game. Marist was limited to .152.

In the fifth game, Marist got three kills and a pair of solo blocks from Hanson to take a 5-1 lead. LeSouder, Graham and Simpson combined for with six kills to forge a 7-7 tie. The Red Foxes came back with three kills to take a 10-8 lead. The Purple Eagles responded and took a 14-13 lead on LeSouder’s fifth kill of the game. She added two more and Graham had another to make it 17-16. Marist tied it on a kill from Dominiqu O’Sullivan, but Graham responded with one of her own to put Niagara up 18-17. Red Foxes’ Christy Lukes tied it again (18-18) with a kill before Graham and LeSouder each pounded down a kill for the Niagara win.

Niagara returns to action Nov. 22 when it travels to Fairfield, Conn., to take on the Fairfield Stags at 7 p.m. in Alumni Hall.