The volleyball team wasn’t going to take its first loss without a fight.
They made this clear Friday night in the Long Island University-Brooklyn Invitational against Boston College.
Temple dropped the first two sets by scores of 25-18 and 25-17 respectively and the Owls faced their first 2-0 deficit in a match so far this season.
“We really had a slow start today, we just didn’t play very well at the beginning of the match,” coach Bakeer Ganes said. “I think it was more that we didn’t do rather than what Boston College did.”
Temple did indeed step it up in the third set in what was a back and forth set which the Owls pulled out 31-29 to cut the Boston College lead in half.
“It took about a couple sets for us to get into the rhythm we would like to be,” Ganes said acknowledging that he saw a different Temple team in the third set.
Temple would carry that momentum into the fourth set which was their best and cleanest set of the match committing only two errors and coming out on top 25-21 to force the match to a decisive fifth set.
A fifth set was nothing new for Temple so far in this young season as Friday night as the Owls third five-set match, but coming from two sets down to force a fifth was what made Friday a little bit different than previous five setters this season against Syracuse and Princeton.
“When you’re down 2-0, the pressure is off and we kind of used that to our advantage,” Ganes said.
Ultimately, the Temple rally fell just short. The Owls lost another back and forth set in the fifth, similar to the one they won in the third, by a score a 16-14 as this resulted to the first loss of the season for Temple. Caroline Grattan lead the team in kills with 18 while setter Sandra Sydlik added four assists.
Ganes was disappointed his team couldn’t climb all the way back, but was pleased with the fight they showed.
“It’s a great characteristic of a team if you can battle through and never give up,” Ganes said. “Today we just missed a couple plays and it happens. Just because you win doesn’t mean everything is great and just because you lose doesn’t mean everything is bad.”
The Owls will be back on the court two times tomorrow to wrap up the LIU Brooklyn Invitational as they will do battle with Northern Kentucky and the host team LIU Brooklyn.
Greg Frank can be reached at greg.frank@temple.edu or on Twitter @G_Frank6
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