The NC State volleyball team duked out a 3-2 win over the Notre Dame Fighting Irish on Sunday, Nov. 7 in Reynolds Coliseum.
The Wolfpack (14-11, 8-6 ACC) came back from set deficits of 1-0 and 2-1, hanging around just long enough to swing the match in its favor with a dominant 25-17 victory over the Irish (10-13, 7-6 ACC) in the fourth set.
“We did the right things at the right moment,” said head coach Luka Slabe. “I wish we would just be a little bit cleaner in sets that we lost. Because we could have turned this one around a little bit faster.”
NC State did not get off to a good start, committing 11 attack errors to allow the Irish to take the first set 27-25. The fact that the set was decided by just two points despite the Pack’s bevy of miscues on the attack was not lost on Slabe.
“I think we passed okay, but we made hitting errors,” Slabe said. “But when we don’t pass, we weren’t somehow killing the ball.”
The Pack cleaned up its act on offense from there on out, committing 12 total errors over the following four sets. The Wolfpack nipped at the heels of the Fighting Irish, preventing them from running away with the match and buying time for several NC State players to step up and keep their team in the match.
Junior setter Kristen McDaniel did well to set up chances for her teammates, notching 60 assists. A trio of performances carried the bulk of the offensive workload, as 62 of State’s 77 total kills came from three players: junior outside hitter Taylor Rowland with 25, senior outside hitter Jade Parchment with 22 and graduate opposite hitter Melissa Evans with 15.
Defensively, several players delivered to keep the Pack in the match. Evans and sophomore middle blocker Riley Shaak each had five blocks, and graduate libero Kaylee Frazier accumulated 19 digs, leading the five Wolfpack players with double-digits in that category.
“My setters like Kristen, she kept trusting me,” Rowland said. “If I got blocked, or if I didn’t get the kill the first time, she kept trusting me to go back and do my job. So I applaud my whole team.”
Notre Dame was competitive in their own right, establishing their authority around the net early and often to the tune of 14 blocks over the course of the match. Slabe credited Notre Dame’s Sydney Bent with forcing the Pack to adjust to the Irish’s presence at the net.
“[Bent] was giving us hell,” Slabe said. “She was hitting .600, .700 at some point in the game. Believe it or not, she was the one that we had to make an adjustment to. I think we contained the rest of the team pretty well.”
NC State will square off against Notre Dame in its next match, a reverse fixture in South Bend, Indiana on Friday, Nov. 12.
