Fans of the Binghamton University women’s volleyball team are beginning to reach for the panic button, as the America East’s projected No. 1 seed lost another match in conference, this time to the University of New Hampshire, 3-0. The Bearcats also dropped a nonconference match to Colgate, 3-2.
At 3-4 in conference, Binghamton (11-13) now sits in fourth in the America East. The Bearcats have lost four of their last five in conference, and five of their last six overall. Meanwhile, UNH (10-14, 2-5 AE) picked up its second conference win on the year and split the season series with BU, who won the first match 3-1. Despite the recent trends, Binghamton head coach Glenn Kiriyama is not overly worried just yet.
“I wouldn’t say we’re concerned, but we’ve just got to fight every match,” Kiriyama said. “It’s going to be tough. We knew it was going to be tough, this conference, so nothing really surprises us. We’ve just got to start executing a little bit better on our side.”
The two teams faced off on Sunday at the West Gym. The Bearcats fell behind early, trailing 4-1 in the opening minutes, before rallying back for a 12-11 lead. The two teams battled, and with a 19-18 lead the Wildcats called a timeout. After that, it was all New Hampshire. They went on a 6-2 run to take the set 25-20.
In the second set, Binghamton took the opening point. Unfortunately for the Bearcats, that would be their last lead of the match. New Hampshire went out in front, leading by as much as 10-7 before BU tied it at 11. Binghamton struggled to handle the Wildcat attack after that, though, as UNH got to set point at 24-16. Junior outside hitter Anna Lejina scored a pair of kills on the next two plays for the Bearcats, but the small rally was too little, too late as senior middle blocker Kirsten Bates had a kill to seal the match, 25-18. The Bearcats served four balls into the net in the set.
“A lot of it is focus,” Kiriyama said regarding the team’s service game. “It’s one of those skills you sometimes can be overly aggressive on, and then it sort of backfires on you. Sometimes we’ve got to ease off a little bit and make a few more of those, and then hopefully the rest of our defense can compensate.”
The third set was more of the same for Binghamton. The match remained tight for the first half of the set, before UNH pulled ahead for a 19-14 lead. The Bearcats rallied back, trimming it to 20-17 on a kill from Lejina. However, a Wildcat kill and a serve that Binghamton allowed to drop in, believing it was going to go out, sparked a 5-0 rally for New Hampshire and secured the 25-17 win.
“New Hampshire played pretty well,” Kiriyama said. “They’re a good team. We knew it was going to be a tough match going in. The last match came down to a couple points here and there, so we knew it was going to be really tight…But we didn’t play our best match. They served tough, gave our passing a tough time, and we didn’t serve as tough, so that was a big difference right there.”
New Hampshire senior middle blocker Lindsay Fogarty led the match with 12 kills, while Bates had 10. Bearcat senior middle blocker Dawn Lammert and junior outside hitter Michelle McDonough led the team with nine blocks each, though McDonough also had a match-high eight errors. Freshman Alex Roland had three blocks. As a team, UNH tallied seven aces to zero for BU.
With just three conference matches left this season, and two of them coming on the road, the Bearcats will need to turn things around quickly if they hope to have any momentum going into the America East tournament. Kiriyama believes that confidence is an issue for his team right now.
“It’s always tough when you’re losing and it’s sometimes tough to work your way out of,” he said. “So we’re concentrating on the next match and hopefully we can sort of put things together this week…They’ve just got to start to perform just a little bit better and work on the fundamentals and hopefully the rest will work itself out.”
The conference loss followed a nonconference loss at Colgate University on Wednesday. The Bearcats led two sets to none in the match, but dropped the final three sets to give up the match. Kiriyama said his team played at an “even keel” throughout the match, never really stepping up its level of play.
The Bearcats are scheduled to play a pair of conference games with important playoff implications this weekend. They visit third-place Stony Brook University (12-11, 4-3 AE) on Friday at 7 p.m., followed by a match at second-place University of Maryland, Baltimore County (13-9, 5-2 AE) on Saturday at 6 p.m.