The Virginia Cavaliers volleyball team dropped their match last night to the Duke Blue Devils, 3-0. Despite being 25-3 overall and 18-1 in the ACC, the Blue Devils are not ranked in the AVCA Division I Women's Top 25 poll. The loss dropped the Cavaliers to 21-7 overall and 14-5 in the ACC.
Virginia traded points with Duke during the first part of the first game. After a tie at 6-6, Duke seized control and eventually held an eight-point lead at 26-18. The Cavaliers battled back to within five points but lost the match by seven, 30-23. Duke's hitting percentage for the first game was .471, while Virginia's was a much lower .184.
The second game appeared to be the Cavaliers' to lose as they gained the lead after a 2-2 tie and held it throughout much of the game. Duke took control of the lead at 30-29, though, and ended up winning an exciting second game, 33-31. Even though Virginia lost the game, the team had a better hitting percentage than Duke in this game with an edge of .306 to .231.
One of the stories throughout the match was Virginia's serving errors. The team had 11 overall and seven in game two alone.
"When you're an aggressive serving team like we are, you got to roll with the punches," sophomore Sarah Kirkwood said. "You give and you take, and that's kind of the price you pay for being such an intense serving team, but that's not why we lost."
Virginia coach Melissa Shelton spoke about the missed serves as well.
"We gave them seven points on missed serves in game two and lost by two points," Shelton said. "So, that's a big bummer right there."
The team instead cited back row play as the reason they lost.
"We didn't go par-for-par with them on the back row and that's why we lost," Kirkwood said.
The Cavaliers and Blue Devils battled back and forth for command of the third game until Duke took the lead after a 16-16 tie and never looked back, outscoring Virginia 14-7 from that point on for a 30-23 win. Duke did not even allow the Cavaliers to win one game last night -- Virginia did tally a game in the previous match at Duke, a 3-1 loss.
One of the things that kept the games close for the Cavaliers was the play of sophomore Shannon Davis. Davis had 11 kills, tying her for most on the team with freshman Lauren Dickson.
"It's really hard with Duke playing incredible defense," Davis said. "They have the most amazing digs every time. So, anytime we're playing against them we just try to get the ball and getting kills helps build momentum but they're just really good defensively. So, it's really tough."
The team also mentioned the way Duke plays nearly error-free volleyball.
"Duke has [played that way] all year and that's how they beat people," Shelton said. "We thought we would be at that point too but we just weren't."
The Cavaliers must keep their collective head up -- they need to remain in second place in the conference during the regular season in order to earn an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.
"We just need to figure out how to move past this and win the next three," Shelton said.
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