BROOKYLN, N.Y. - After a four-set battle on Tuesday night at the Steinberg Wellness Center in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, the St. Francis Brooklyn men's volleyball team returned home to The ARC on Thursday.
The Terriers hosted the rival LIU Sharks on Thursday evening to close out the back-to-back season series.
LIU kept the same thread as Tuesday's match, winning the second and third sets, but St. Francis battled back to force a fifth set. The Sharks ultimately took a 3-2 victory.
QUICK HITS
- Trailing 6-8 early, the Terriers preyed on some timely errors by the Sharks to rattle off four straight points to take a 10-8 lead. The Terriers led by as many as four points later in the set.
- LIU cut away at the lead and scored two straight late to cut the Terriers to just one, 22-23. Canyon Tuman earned the home team serve back and Bartek Zielinski clinched the first set with his first ace of the day.
- The Terriers worked from behind in the second set to take a 6-5 lead off a Zielinski kill. They struggled to keep pace as the set wore on, committing six service errors and hitting just .107.
- St. Francis cut the deficit to just two, 11-13, on two of the Sharks five attack errors in the second, but could not answer the bell down the stretch. LIU evened up the match with a 25-18 set win.
- The home team had no answers in the third set, hitting .000 and falling 14-25.
- With the match on the line in the fourth set, the Terriers looked for an answer. Down 18-13 late, head coach Justin Lambert rallied the troops out of a timeout as they rattled off 8 of the next nine points to take a 21-20 lead.
- LIU's Livan Moreno put the visitors back in front, 23-22, with back to back kills. Andrea Lancianese and Patrick Rogers fired back with consecutive kills to set up the Terriers for a 25-23 win and force a fifth set.
- The home team had its most kills in a set, 14, in the fourth; hitting .242 as a team.
- After trading points to open the decisive fifth set, LIU scored three straight to force a timeout by the Terriers. The Sharks led 6-3 at that point and held on for a 15-12 win.
TEAM LEADERS
The Terrier attack was led by Patrick Rogers (15 kills) and Andrea Lancianese (13 kills).
James Henneberry led all players with a .533 hitting percentage on 9 kills, and paced the Terriers with 3.0 total blocks.
NEXT UP: St. Francis hits the road again for the Kean Tri-Match on Saturday, taking on Randoplh-Macon (2:00 p.m.) and Kean (4:00 p.m.) in Union, N.J.
