Box Score

JERSEY CITY, N.J. – The Niagara volleyball team was pushed to the limit, but eventually prevailed to defeat the Manhattan Jaspers in five sets, 16-25, 25-14, 25-21, 22-25, 23-21, on Sunday at the Yanitelli Center on the campus of Saint Peter’s College.

“Today was a very hard match,” head coach Susan Clements said. “We didn’t pass well in the match and our offense was not clicking. We have to find a way to have more intensity and readiness in order to not put ourselves in difficult situations.”

Niagara (20-7, 14-0 MAAC) remains unbeaten in conference while extending its conference and overall win streaks to 33 and 15 matches, respectively. Niagara’s leadership and experience were crucial once again as the Purple Eagles had to pull out a five-set win for the second straight Sunday. The Purple Eagles, however, had to rally from a set down and fight off two match points to preserve the win.

NU was up 5-1 in the final set, when the Jaspers (14-11, 7-5 MAAC) stormed back to take a brief 11-10 lead. Manhattan then served for the match at 14-13 and at 18-17, but kills by Hannah Hedrick and Ellen Senf brought the Purple Eagles leveled. NU also had chances to close out the match, 16-15 and 17-16, but it wasn’t until blocks by Amanda Wilken and Senf on Manhattan’s Mariana Furquim’s attack that Niagara would win the set and match at 23-21.

“We gutted out the win even though we did not play well,” Clements said.

After dropping the first set, NU opened the second set with a 7-1 lead and won the set 25-14 while holding the Jaspers to -.059 hitting. The Purple Eagles took the third set, 25-21, after digging themselves out of an early deficit. NU was trailing 10-5 before scoring 14 of the next 22 points to take the lead for good. Manhattan tied the match at 2-2 after winning the fourth set, 25-22, thanks to a late 6-2 spurt to break the 16-16 deadlock.

The Purple Eagles filled up the stats sheet with four players having double-digit kills and five in double-digit digs. Hedrick had a season-high 26 kills and recorded her team-leading 14th double-double with 20 digs.  Senf was tied for the second most kills in the match with 17 on a .457 hitting percentage. Kari Honomichl had 14 kills and 13 digs, Kathy Bibler had 11 kills and Taylor Scully recorded 13 digs.

Sam Morgan led the match with 28 digs to record double-digit digs for the 123rd consecutive match.  

Nicole Bayer set the single-match assists record in a five-set match and tied the program’s record set by Jennifer Hansford versus Canisius on Sept. 7, 2002 with 65 assists.

Niagara returns to the Gallagher Center this upcoming weekend when it hosts Siena and Marist in its final home weekend matches.