Earlier this week, Maryland volleyball middle blocker Ashlyn MacGregor called the team’s two wins over Iowa last season “fun games to play in.” She notched 14 kills in one of those matches and eight blocks in the other.
With the Terps looking for their first Big Ten victory of the season in Wednesday’s road matchup with the Hawkeyes, she hoped to duplicate her performances from last year.
In the first set, though, Maryland struggled to limit Iowa at the net and fell, 25-22. The Hawkeyes notched 16 kills compared to Maryland’s eight in the frame.
Even though MacGregor turned in an efficient outing, the Terps failed to bounce back from the opening set loss and dropped the match in straight sets. The middle blocker, who entered the game as the Big Ten’s leader in blocks per set, finished with four blocks and five kills.
“I thought we had control of Set 1 for a while,” coach Steve Aird said. “We couldn’t close it out and couldn’t really recover from that.”
Attacking errors, which Aird had warned his squad to be mindful of this past week, plagued the Terps. They made 24 errors in the game compared to the Hawkeyes’ 14 mistakes, which made it difficult to sustain stretches of success.
“We let the game get away from us,” outside hitter Liz Twilley said. “We weren’t as consistent as we should have been and we made some errors that we have to work on managing.”
After Maryland’s narrow first-set loss, Iowa jumped out to a 5-0 lead in the second. The run, which ended with two attacking errors, forced Aird to take an early timeout.
He had to do the same in third frame when the Hawkeyes took a 6-1 advantage. The Terps then made five errors over a span of six points to fall behind 10-2.
Once again, Maryland failed to come back from an early-set deficit, dropping the decisive frame, 25-16.
“The conference is so good that no matter who you play, if you’re giving up a lot of free points, you’re not going to have success,” Aird said. “I don’t think anyone played toward the top end of their potential.”
Aird, who has emphasized overall growth over individual wins and losses this year, knew it would take a “clean” performance to top a veteran Hawkeyes team he said would pose a challenge to his young squad.
Instead, the coach watched as the Terps dropped their third consecutive Big Ten match to begin conference play. Despite his squad’s struggles, however, he noted “there’s a lot of volleyball left in the season and [the team will] have a lot more opportunities for growth.”
He believes Maryland’s performance against the Hawkeyes was not indicative of its true talent level.
