In 2010, the volleyball team struggled to close out sets. Often times, head coach Todd Kress' squad would gain an early lead, only to throw it away with inconsistent play throughout individual sets.
Tuesday night marked the final non-conference match of the season, and the Bulls (8-8, 1-1 Mid-American Conference) seem to be reverting back to last year's struggles. The Bulls had a lead in every set, but were only able to close out one of them, falling to their cross-town rivals – Canisius (5-9) – 3-1 (25-22, 19-25, 26-24, 26-24). Buffalo is just 2-4 on the road this season.
"We have to learn how to close out sets," Kress said. "We had a lead in every single set and just weren't able to close them out. We aren't doing that and I don't know if that's a sign that we're a bad team or that we're a young team, but we have to learn how to finish."
The teams split the first two sets of the match. Buffalo relinquished a 17-11 lead in the first set after failing to stop a 12-3 run by Canisius. The Bulls are 6-10 in first set's this season, and only 3-7 in matches when they drop the first set.
There was a role reversal in second set, and Buffalo went on a 14-4 run of its own to overcome the 15-11 deficit and tie the match at one set apiece. Buffalo was able to do so with a .370 hitting percentage, by far its best output.
The next two sets didn't go well for the Bulls. Each went down to the wire, but Buffalo wasn't able to come out on top of either and lost both, 26-24.
Despite the score, Buffalo was almost identical in statistics with Canisus. The Golden Griffins had a hitting percentage of .209 to the Bulls' .208, while Buffalo had 22 errors to Canisius' 23.
Kress believes that the Bulls' errors were far more costly.
"We weren't swinging to terminate," Kress said "We had plenty of opportunities to put the ball away and just weren't able to do it. We made too many errors. Once we made an error, we followed it up with three or four more and that was definitely a big part of [tonight's performance]."
The Golden Griffins were led by a pair of impressive performances from outside hitters Olivia Chrzanowski and Danielle Brawn, who tallied 16 and 15 kills, respectively. The two led a Canisius attack that the Bulls weren't able to stop.
"Defensively, we left too much out there," Kress said. "Blocking is the hardest thing to understand for a young team. Once our blocking gets better, then we'll get better. Tonight, we were just average."
Freshman hitter Liz Scott was once again the offensive leader for Buffalo with 12 kills, while senior blocker Abby Niekamp followed with 10. Sophomore setter Dani Reinert set up the majority of those kills with 40 assists.
Sophomore Carissa McKenna led her team defensively with a team-high eight blocks, while freshman libero Kelly Svoboda had 17 digs.
As Buffalo heads into conference play, Kress is thankful that the long season will give his team enough time to improve.
"There are a number of things we have to get better at," Kress said. "It's a long season. We still [have] 14 conference matches, and we've just got to get better."
The Bulls will face Miami (Ohio) (10-6, 1-1 MAC) this Friday at 7 p.m. and Bowling Green (14-1, 1-1 MAC) the next day at 3 p.m.
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Photo: Courtesy of UB Athletics
