Box Score
RIVERDALE, N.Y. ? Led by Alyssa Getzel's (Richmond, Va.) first career triple-double, the Manhattan College volleyball team (7-16, 6-7 MAAC) got the victory it needed on Saturday afternoon, and the Lady Jaspers did it in dramatic fashion. Manhattan rallied back from two-sets-to-one down, then overcame six match points in the fifth set before posting a 25-18, 18-25, 24-26, 25-14, 25-23 triumph over archrival Iona (15-10, 7-6 MAAC) at Draddy Gymnasium. With the win, Manhattan kept its chances of qualifying for the MAAC Tournament alive.
“We absolutely had a ?must-win' mentality,” Head Coach Jolie Ward said. “It's great to win a match like this. We hadn't really had the chance to upset somebody until today, and I'm proud we had the ability and determination to pull it out.”
The Lady Jaspers played a shaky first set when the teams met in New Rochelle on Oct. 5, but that was not the case on Saturday. Manhattan used a 5-0 run to turn a 4-2 deficit into a 7-4 lead before Iona stormed back to force an 8-8 tie. With the score knotted at 14-14, the Lady Jaspers went on a 6-2 run to open up a four-point advantage, 20-16. Iona broke up the rally with a kill by Molly O'Shea, but Manhattan scored the next four points to get to set point at 24-17. A kill by Jaci Rahey (West Milford, N.J.) finished off a 25-18 win in a set where the Lady Jaspers hit .367 (14 kills, three errors, 30 attempts) as a team.
In the second set, Iona used a 6-0 run to turn a 3-3 deadlock into a 9-3 lead. Trailing 11-6, the Lady Jaspers went on a 6-2 run to pull within one at 13-12, but the Gaels scored the next two points to bring their advantage back to three, 15-12. Manhattan got within one point again at 17-16 before Iona went on an 8-2 rally to end the set, 25-18, and send the teams into the locker room even at one set apiece.
Iona scored the first three points of the third set, but Manhattan rallied back to take a 6-5 lead. After the Gaels opened up a 15-11 advantage, the Lady Jaspers responded with a 4-0 run to tie it at 15-15. Iona scored the next two points to regain the lead before a 6-1 Manhattan rally put the Lady Jaspers back in front, 21-18. Iona reached set point when a block by Alyssa Erickson and Rachelle Wilson made it 24-23. Andrea Reiff (Hawthorne, N.Y.) pounded a kill to fight off the set point, but the Gaels earned another when Erickson and Wilson again teamed up for a block. Iona won the set, 26-24, and took a 2-1 lead in the match on a kill by Sarah Weiner.
Manhattan totally dominated the fourth set. The Lady Jaspers opened the set on a 4-1 run, then used a 10-3 spurt to increase their advantage to 14-6. Trailing 17-8, the Gaels rallied for three straight points to cut their deficit to 17-11, but Manhattan responded with a 7-2 run to go up 24-13. A kill by Sherryta Stokes (Beltsville, Md.) capped the 25-14 win that sent the match into a decisive fifth set.
The fifth set was an epic struggle that featured 18 ties, eight lead changes, and 12 match points (six each). Iona got to match point first at 14-12 before a kill by Rahey, then back-to-back kills by Stokes gave the Lady Jaspers their first match point at 15-14. Iona won the next point on a Weiner kill, and each team had three more match point opportunities before things were finally settled. Manhattan got to match point again at 23-22 before Iona's Colleen Genet slammed a kill to tie it at 23-23. Another kill by Stokes followed, and the Lady Jaspers finally put the match away when Stokes found a line and ball went down, sealing a 25-23 set win that capped the come-from-behind victory.
Getzel finished the match with a career-high 10 kills, 14 digs and 54 assists. She also hit .375 and the only hitting error she committed in 24 attempts came when she was blocked in the fifth set. Stokes pounded a career-high 26 kills and added 14 digs, while Reiff also had a double-double with 10 kills and 19 digs. Rahey tallied 14 kills and Katie Kerbstat (Saddle River, N.J.) notched 10 digs. Libero Diane Strutner (San Jose, Calif.) registered a career-high 28 digs, as the Lady Jaspers out-dug an Iona team that leads the MAAC in that category 101-86. For the match, the Lady Jaspers hit .244 (70-23-193) as a team.
Wilson had a team-high 19 kills and hit .438 for Iona. Genet tallied 15 kills on .406 hitting, and Wiener registered 10 kills for the Gaels. Erickson recorded a double-double with 44 assists and 11 digs. Allison Nieters notched 26 digs, while Laura Fojanesi, Rachel Whitten and Nicole Tamburri each posted 11 digs. Iona hit .185 (61-23-205) in the match.
A loss would have left the Lady Jaspers three behind the Gaels with five matches to play and all but eliminated Manhattan from the race for one of the four postseason spots. Instead, the Lady Jaspers, who are now tied for sixth place with Saint Peter's after the Peahens' five-set loss at Niagara, trail fourth-place Marist by two and fifth-place Iona by just one, with the Gaels and Red Foxes facing off in Poughkeepsie on Sunday.
Manhattan hosts Rider (9-14, 2-11 MAAC), a team it defeated in three sets last weekend, at 2 p.m. on Sunday. A live webcast of the match will be available on www.gojaspers.com as a part of the JasperVision package. The full webcast of Saturday's match will be available on-demand starting late Saturday night.