Sea Wolves pummel Volleyball

In the first-ever meeting between the two teams, Stony Brook defeated the Quakers in three straight games. The Penn volleyball team will have better nights than it had last night against Stony Brook. Namely, every night before last night and after it. Things could not have gone worse for the Quakers (10-11) last night as they dropped a 3-0 decision in their first-ever meeting with the Sea Wolves (15-11), who are in their very first year in Division I. "I don't know [what happened]," Penn sophomore outside hitter Stephanie Horan said. "We came out not as fired up as we wanted to be and we couldn't find what we needed, that one thing that we needed to pick us up, and that really hurt us because as much as we wanted to win, we were missing something, and we just couldn't play better." Last night's defeat was even worse for the Quakers than Friday's 3-0 loss to Princeton, a match in which the Quakers failed to hold a 14-10 lead in the first game and a 7-0 lead in the second game. "This is definitely [worse]," said Penn co-captain Karin Witte, who played last night in her first match in a week after spraining her ankle against Long Island. "[Against] Princeton, at least we played aggressively but failed to close the match. This, we lost our intensity and we didn't recover, we didn't adjust." Penn was a little bit sluggish to open the match but came back to take a 13-10 lead in a see-saw game with the Sea Wolves. At that point, Stony Brook coach Theresa Tiso called for a crucial timeout. "I don't know that it was anything I said," Tiso said. "But we've been talking about playing with heart, with desire and that's really all we talked about. Just getting out there, getting the ball in the court, make the plays that we need to make." If the words in the timeout did not make a difference, then something simply clicked for the Sea Wolves, who then scored 35 of the next 41 points to turn their 13-10 first-game deficit into a 15-13, 15-4, 15-2 triumph. Almaris Miranda led Stony Brook with 18 kills, but the best performance of the night was turned in by Sea Wolves freshman Alisse Gossett, who had 11 kills while leading the visitors with 14 digs, two block solos and three block assists. The only Stony Brook player not from New York State, Gossett -- who hails from Cedar, Texas -- frequently quashed what could have become spurts of Penn momentum with her solid play in the middle, often driving the Quakers even deeper into their doldrums. "[Gossett] made a big difference tonight," Tiso said. "She ran the middle really well. She dug well, hit well, blocked well [and] almost had a career game." As the match wore on, Stony Brook got better and better, hitting a very solid .250 in the second game and an unbelievable .462 in the final game. The Quakers, meanwhile, saw their play deteriorate as things progressed, hitting an anemic minus-.049 in the second game. The 15-2 third game marked Penn's worst loss in a game against any opponent this season. In each of the final two games, Penn was blitzed early, as the Sea Wolves opened with 11-1 runs. Six Quakers had negative hitting percentages. Only Horan had more than 10 kills for Penn, tallying 11. Sophomore setter Jodie Antypas, averaging 34.4 assists per match coming into last night, registered only 19. The Sea Wolves outdug the normally steady Red and Blue defense 58-44, as Penn defenders dove for -- and often missed -- balls that are usually routine plays for them. Old problems resurfaced as well for the Quakers. Penn committed seven service errors while picking up just one ace, on an Alexis Zimbalist serve. Horan, whose early part of the season was marked by service problems, had three service errors, and Penn scored just two points on her serve for the match. "To not play at our level and give them a good fight is really disappointing," Penn coach Kerry Major said. "I let them know that if we play this way the rest of the season, we're going down." The task now for the Quakers is to rebound, and to not go downhill for the rest of the season heading into the Ivy League Tournament. Penn is in some ways still not mentally over its loss to Princeton on Friday, and last night's loss does not help matters. "All around we did not play well," Major said. "You have to learn from it and figure it out before you put it behind you, and figure it out before you can fix it. They have to figure out what they did wrong and not do it the next time. And it's not about your lucky pair of socks or the way you sit on one side of the van or the other, it's about preparing mentally to be strong all the time."

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