It was 14-13 in NC State’s favor in the fifth set after dropping the second and third sets. The Wolfpack had come back to barely claim the fourth set 25-22 and looked to take the match holding serve. Senior opposite hitter Amanda Rice was at the baseline and with the chance to ice the game when the Pack committed three errors in a row.
A 14-13 lead quickly evaporated into a 3-2 defeat with two consecutive attack errors crushing NC State volleyball’s (5-3) hopes of a come-from-behind victory against Coastal Carolina (4-7).
“We were just lacking in energy at times, but I know we really turned it around in the fourth set and the fifth set was there,” Rice said. “It’s just unfortunate the way that it happened.”
A common theme over the past few matches for the Pack has been slow starts. In each of the first three sets the Pack went down four, five and seven points respectively within the first 20 points of the set.
Despite an early 9-5 deficit in the opening set, the red-and-white battled back to win 25-19, including the last four points in a row.
The Pack recovered from the early slip and by the end of the first set, it had led the Chanticleers in almost every major statistical category. In the next two sets, however, the early slips were too drastic for the Wolfpack to recover like it did in the first.
After a back-and-forth start to the second set, Coastal Carolina jumped out to a 13-8 lead and similarly to how the Pack went on a scoring run to end the first, the Chanticleers did the same closing out the second set 25-18.
In the second set, the Wolfpack had as many kills as it did attacking errors and as a result a hitting percentage of 0.000. Whether it was an inability to handle Coastal’s attacks or make accurate passes, NC State was getting in its own way more often than not.
The third set saw the Pack clean up some errors and contribute a couple more kills, but nevertheless couldn’t change the result also dropping this set 25-18. The Chanticleers jumped out to a 5-1 lead, then a 12-7 lead and before you could blink the Wolfpack was looking at a 20-9 deficit.
The first set win was no surprise but dropping the next two in the fashion that the players did, to a team coming in with a 3-7 record, left many Wolfpack fans scratching their heads.
“I don’t know what it is between the first and second set,” Rice said. “Maybe we get too comfortable or just know we’re the better team and we’re hoping things just carry over, but it doesn’t work like that.”
Nothing may have been more obvious than the lack of energy that was coming from the red-and-white side. While Coastal was lauding every earned point, head coach Luka Slabe had to get his team to start cheering at one point to try and create some sort of momentum for the group.
“We can’t just keep saying that we’re fighting for energy the entire time because good Division I programs don’t do that, and that’s where we want to be,” Rice said.
With the help of the Reynolds Coliseum crowd, the Wolfpack started off the fourth set with much more energy, and as a result, didn’t fall into that early hole like it did in the first three sets. At a 9-9 deadlock, the Pack rattled off four consecutive points to take a 13-9 lead and force a Coastal Carolina timeout.
Coastal eventually tied the score at 19-19 but three consecutive errors from the Chanticleers created a large enough lead for the Pack to hold onto to close the fourth set 25-22.
A 15-point tiebreaker set was all that was left to decide the match, and each team wanted to take it just as much as the other. Throughout the fifth and final set, neither side amassed a lead larger than two points.
Blow-for-blow, the two sides traded points and neither could find a way to gain a comfortable advantage. With each point lasting a lifetime, eventually, it was the Pack that held the first match point but three consecutive errors gave the Chanticleers their fourth win of the season.
It was too little, too late this time for the Pack but nonetheless, there were still some positives to take away from its never give up attitude.
“I’m really proud of how resilient we were,” Rice said. “I wish we had capitalized on that a little earlier.”
Rice had yet another impressive game in the front court, her 18 kills and 3.5 blocks gave her a total of 21.5 points, a season-high. Junior outside hitter Ava Brizard had the second most kills and points on the team with 14 and 15.5 respectively.
In every game, this pair has proved to be the leaders of the Pack but the rest of the team is going to need to step up if it wants to seriously compete come conference play.
“I’m glad that we had a bit of a wake-up call,” Rice said. “ACC play is a lot more elevated and especially when we play Stanford and Cal on our second opening weekend. I hope we’re ready for facing some kind of thing where we have to go at the jump if we’re expecting to win.”
The Wolfpack kickstarts ACC play at home against Virginia Tech on Friday at 7 p.m.
