After losing Friday night against Virginia Tech, the volleyball team lost its match against Virginia on Saturday night, 3-0.
With leads in both the second and third game, once again N.C. State was unable to hold on in either match.
Freshman outside hitter Chrissy Zirpolo had the team’s highest hitting percentage for the game with .381.
Despite the loss, coach Charita Stubbs said she was pleased with the play of Zirpolo.
“I think that this was the first night that we had a kid hit above .150, but her to hit a .381 says a lot about her determination,” Stubbs said.
And while Stubbs said sophomore outside hitter Keisha Raibon still has a lot of work in order to get where she needs to be, she said she was pleased with the aggressiveness of her sophomore, who had nine kills.
“For Keisha, right now she’s still trying to work on her ball placement. She gets the ball on her hand all the time, but when she’s aggressive, you know that she’s at least in the right place. And that’s all I’m asking for her to be — aggressive,” Stubbs said.
“Her mistakes typically are because she’s second-guessing herself or she’s a little passive.”
Throughout the game, Zirpolo was all over the court. She said if there is a chance of getting to the ball, she goes all out.
“My biggest things is that I hate to see the ball hit the ground,” Zirpolo said. “If it’s flying out of bounds, I will go get it no matter where it is. If we can get to it, I think we should be able to get it up and get it over.”
During the second game, the Wolfpack were leading the Cavilers, at one point by five points.
But eventually the Cavaliers would come back and tie the game at 26-26. Virginia went on to score four of the next five points, winning the set 30-27.
The third game was more of the same. State led the first few points but Virginia would come back, take the lead and eventually take the game and match.
“Servicing broke down,” Raibon said. “We weren’t mentally tough. It’s about believing and I don’t think a couple of people believed.”
Zirpolo seconded the thoughts of Raibon.
“I thought our servicing broke down a lot,” Zirpolo said. “We weren’t mentally though, we weren’t ready to pull out in the game and we weren’t ready to win.”
Stubbs said during the second game, her team didn’t improve its play after Virginia started to perform better later in the game.
In the second game, we stepped out, and were really focused, and were doing well and when Virginia got better we pretty much stayed the same,” Stubbs said.
State’s next match is Wednesday night against Duke. The game is set for 7 p.m.