ST. DAVIDS, Pa.– The top-seeded and defending MAC Commonwealth Champion Eastern University women's volleyball team made a strong statement early and only trailed briefly in a convincing three-set win over the fourth-seeded Messiah University Falcons. The Eagles (22-5) hit .556 in the opening set to advance to a league championship match for the 28th consecutive season.
Hannah Pringle pounded out kills for the first two points of the match, and the Eagles raced to a 9-2 lead in the opening set. The Falcons briefly closed the gap to five points, but Eastern scored seven of the final eight points to claim a 25-13 win. With the serve-receive in sync and
Elle Jiron-Bujanda moving the ball, the Eastern hitters found themselves against single blockers and ending points quickly. Eastern was successful on 12-of-14 sideout chances. The Eagles put away 16 balls on only 27 chances. Pringle and
Bridgette Kelly each had four kills in the set.
"It was good to get off to a fast start," Head Coach
Mark Birtwistle said after the match. "I think Elle did a good job recognizing what they were taking away and going some other places. Throughout the match, we were able to get different players to end points for us."
The Eagles led from wire-to-wire in the second set, but the Falcons made a late-push and fought off four set-points before the Eagles were able to close out the set at 25-23 with a
Peyton Wheeler kill. After the Eagles started up 11-7, the Falcons closed the gap to 11-10. As she has all year,
Viviana Fragoso sparked a run with aggressive serving. The first-year defensive specialist served seven-straight points to put the Eagles up 19-10.
The Falcons kept balls off the floor and took advantage of some Eastern errors to close the gap to 24-23 before Wheeler ended the set with hit off hands. Neither team put up pretty offensive numbers in the second. The Eagles had ten kills and ten errors and the Falcons had six kills and ten errors.
Grace Casagrande had seven of her match-high 20 digs in the set. Maddy Eby had five digs in the set for the Falcons.
The Falcons (19-10) scored the first two points of the third set and stayed ahead until 5-4 when
Trinity Gruber served for a pair of points to put the Eagles up. The first decisive run of final set came with Jiron-Bujanda at the service line. The Eagles stretched a 14-12 lead to 18-12.
Kaylyn Zeigler had two kills in the run and six kills in the final set. Ziegler finished with a team-best ten kills.
Messiah tied the set at 20 and again at 21 before Fragoso returned to the service line up 22-21. Fragoso's first serve put the Falcons out of system and resulted in a hitting error. She delivered two aces to close the match. The Eagles hit .237 in the final set.
Ziegler hit .400 for the match and added seven digs. Kelly had eight kills and four blocks and
Logan Martin had five kills without an error and a pair of blocks. Jiron-Bujanda had 34 assists and four kills.
On Saturday at 3:00, the Eagles will host Stevenson University in a rematch of last-years MAC Commonwealth Championship. In the two seasons Eastern has been in the MAC Commonwealth, all three matches between the two programs have gone five sets. Eastern earned the home-court advantage in the tournament with a come-from-behind win on Oct. 25. Stevenson advanced to the final with a three-set home win over Widener tonight.
