It seems only fitting that the Binghamton University women’s volleyball team snapped its losing streak with a win against the team that handed the Bearcats their first loss of the conference season. Binghamton beat the University of Maryland, Baltimore County Retrievers on Saturday, after losing to Stony Brook University on Friday.
With the win, the Bearcats (12-14, 4-5 America East) ended a season-high five-match losing streak and held on to their fourth-place position, which would prove to be good for the final seed in the America East tournament. Losing both games would have put them in fifth, behind the University of New Hampshire (11-14, 3-5 AE).
“It was nice to see the team get it together and have a really nice match,” said Binghamton head coach Glenn Kiriyama.
The playoff picture still isn’t clear yet. If the Wildcats win their matches against UMBC and Stony Brook this weekend, they will have a 5-5 record in America East, as will UMBC and Stony Brook. A win against Hartford University (7-19, 0-8 AE) on Friday would put the Bearcats at 5-5 as well, creating a four-way tie for the final three playoff positions. Further complicating things, each team in this scenario would have a 1-1 record against each of the other teams.
But before the Bearcats could worry about any such scenarios, they needed to do their part over the weekend. Having lost five of six matches overall entering the weekend, Binghamton needed to start winning, both to attain a playoff spot and develop some much-needed momentum and confidence. They were unable to do that against the Seawolves on Friday, losing in three sets (25-17, 25-15, 25-13).
“It’s like night and day, really,” Kiriyama said. “We didn’t play that well in just about every aspect, but particularly passing. That made it easier on Stony Brook’s blocking and defense to sort of rule the court there. We’re just glad that we were able to turn that around and play better the very next day.”
Stony Brook had seven blocks and five service aces, hitting .371 in the match. Three Seawolves had double-digit kills, led by the 11 from senior Harmonie Calinda, who leads the conference in kills per set. Freshman Corinne Perry had 36 assists, and was named America East Rookie of the Week.
The Bearcats, on the other hand, hit .165 and had zero aces to six service errors. Junior Anna Lejina had a match-high 12 kills, but it was junior Michelle McDonough’s nine kills that garnered more attention. With the kills, McDonough became the fastest Bearcat to notch 1,000 kills in her career, and just the second junior to do so. Only nine other Bearcats have accomplished the feat.
The Bearcats had no time to dwell on the loss, as they had to travel from Long Island to Maryland in order to play UMBC the very next day. In the first set, it appeared as though it was going to be yet another disappointing match for Binghamton as the team fell behind 7-2 to start the match. Kiriyama said he and his team knew they had to make a move at that point, and they did just that. They tied the match at 10 before pulling ahead for good, taking the set 25-18. The momentum from the win seemed to carry over into the second set, which featured a 12-3 Bearcat run as part of a 25-17 lead. In the final set, BU went on a 14-1 run to open the set and held on to win 25-20.
“Things just sort of worked out a lot better defense-wise, our passing picked up and I thought our offense was able to run highly efficiently,” Kiriyama said. “Once we won the first two games, their confidence was high and they were able to carry it over after that break into the third game there. They just played hard and played well and had a lot of enthusiasm out there.”
Anna Lejina once again led the match in kills, this time posting 15, while McDonough followed right behind with 14 of her own. Senior Dawn Lammert had four blocks, part of eight in total for the Bearcats, while junior setter Lindsey Mueller put up match-highs of 35 assists, 15 digs and four blocks. Last year’s America East Rookie of the Year, Alyssa Lang, led the Retrievers with 10 kills.
With another conference win under its belt, Binghamton gets a quick reprieve from conference play with a match against Syracuse University (19-10) on Tuesday at 6 p.m. in the West Gym. While the match is a non-conference game, it is important both for working out the kinks and for a potentially tiebreaker situation.
“We’ve just got one day to prepare for them,” Kiriyama said, “so we’re just going to try and work on the things that we need to work on in order to do well the rest of conference here, and then hopefully do well against Syracuse.”