Volleyball Bounces Back with 3-0 Win Over Crusaders

Sunday, March 14

West Point, NY

4 PM

Army West Point

2-2,2-2Patriot

Holy Cross

3-3,3-3Patriot

Holy Cross

Army West Point

Volleyball Bounces Back with 3-0 Win Over Crusaders

March 14, 2021 | Volleyball

Box Score

WEST POINT, N.Y. – The Army West Point volleyball team defeated Holy Cross Sunday afternoon at Gillis Field House. The Black Knights avenged their Friday evening loss to the Crusaders with a 3-0 victory.

"We are a pretty young team so it's important for us to recover quickly," Army head coach Alma Kovaci Lee said. "Failure is a part of life, but how you recover is important and today's performance tells you a lot about our team. They are incredible competitors."

"Today we came out with the mentality that we were going to play for each other and not let what the other team was doing affect us. Our goal was to play our game and I think it worked pretty well," said freshman Paige Fixemer.

Allanah Cutler led the team with 11 kills and posted an attack percentage of .286. Cate Buckingham was second on the team with eight kills, while Fixemer contributed six. Hannah Presley led the team with 29 assists, while Ana Oglivie had 22 digs.

As a team, Army had 41 kills and just 10 errors. The Black Knights also had a season-high nine blocks.

"Our goal today was to be cleaner with our game," Kovaci Lee said. "We had a ton of hitting errors and serving errors in Friday's match. Our goal was to be smarter with what we do with the ball and we did just that today."

The Black Knights held a tight 16-13 lead in the first set. Army scored six consecutive points with Fixemer serving. The Cadets used the momentum from the run to close out the first with a 25-16 win.

Similarly in the second set, the Cadets held onto a three-point lead past the midway mark and managed to register six consecutive points to push ahead 21-12. The two teams traded points for the remainder of the set with Monica Eckford eventually giving Army the 2-0 advantage on a kill.

The Black Knights charged out to an 8-0 lead in the third. The Crusaders did not go away easily, but the Cadets still managed to pull off the 25-17 victory.

This marked the second time this season that Army bounced back from a loss on the road with a 3-0 sweep at home. Dating back to last season's contest against Loyola on Nov. 19, 2019, the Black Knights have won eight consecutive sets at Gillis.

"Our team is resilient, competitive and they're hungry to win. Our seniors have done a really great job setting the tone and our freshmen are following that. Overall, everyone has done very good job. It excites me to see how hungry they are to compete and win. You can see from the cheers how much they love the game."

NOTES AND HIGHLIGHTS

Army is 2-0 at home this season.
Cutler notched her third double-digit kill performance of the season.
She has 40 kills on the year, which ranks second on the team.

UP NEXT
Army will again square off with Holy Cross in a weekend series. The Cadets will host the Crusaders on Friday, March 19 before traveling out to Worcester, Mass., on Sunday, March 21.