The Oswego State volleyball team put on their rally caps and defeated SUNY Fredonia in a nail-biting 3-2 victory Friday night. With the win, the Lakers will advance to the SUNYAC tournament semifinals and will face off against SUNY New Paltz tomorrow at 3 p.m.
Senior Kelsey Dillon, who had 11 kills on the day, talked about how the team didn’t want to fall victim to an upset.
“Coach [O’Connell] said a couple of days ago, a lot of times the three seed will overlook the six seed and focus on the next day,” Dillon said. “We had a couple of scares but everyone trusts each other and we did our job.”
The Lakers opened up strong, winning the first set 25-16, letting the Blue Devils know they were the dominant team.
However, the Lakers would drop both the second and third sets and set themselves up with a big disadvantage.
During those two sets, it was clear the Lakers offense was struggling which led to the downfall in their defense too. The Lakers had only nine kills on 49 chances in the second set, along with seven kills on 37 chances in the third set.
Fredonia played great defense all night and was able to keep the play alive during the most dramatic circumstances.
As the fourth set began, the Lakers look like all hope was lost, falling behind 4-0. Up to that point in the season, the Lakers were 7-10 in fourth sets, the only set in which they had a losing record. But head coach J.J. O’Connell maintained the confidence in his team and kept them.
“We have a lot of senior leadership on the team so I didn’t have to panic,” O’Connell said. “You trust them after a long time; we’ve had a lot of those battles.”
O’Connell said that during the intermission between the third and fourth set, the team morale and motivation remained high.
“At the beginning of the fourth we actually talked about how we were done 2-0 to Geneseo,” O’Connell said.
In that match against SUNY Geneseo, Oswego came back and won the final three sets in their sweep of conference pool play at Geneseo.
The team knew that they had faced even tougher uphill battles and remained calm and collective between the sets. O’Connell even said they laughed off the fact that they were only down by one set.
“It was good to lighten the mood a bit and get everyone to relax,” he said.
Dillon mentioned how being a senior, this is not the way that she wanted to go out.
“I said to everybody, ‘None of us want this to be the last game of the season,’” Dillon said.
After the three-point deficit in the fourth set, the Lakers turned it on and won the set in dominating fashion 25-19.
A big reason Oswego was able to make the comeback was behind the strong play of two of their freshman: Ariel Murawski and Allison Sullivan.
Murawski finished with 14 kills on the day and was significant in her timing, with many of her kills coming at the right time to switch the momentum from Fredonia’s side to Oswego’s.
“It’s a blessing to have them [the freshman] on the team,” Dillon said. “We have no problem setting them and relying on them.”
The Lakers carried that momentum into the fifth and final set; however, they found themselves trailing once again. The Blue Devils were up 10-6 and had Oswego with their backs against the walls, but the Lakers prevailed once again, closing out the set 16-14.
Junior Lauren Edwards believes that this team is talented enough to continue through the SUNYACs, but must bring their A-game to do so.
“I think we need to stay focused and we need to do our jobs so we can focus as a team,” Edwards said.
“Once you get to the playoffs, the seeds are out the window,” Dillon said. “Every team is good.”
The Lakers hope that Dillon’s philosophy will help them out tomorrow as they face the second seeded SUNY New Paltz.
