The Maryland volleyball team believed it could finish this season strong because of the way it ended last year’s conference schedule. In that campaign, the Terps started Big Ten play 0-9 before finishing 4-6 in their final 10 matches.
Coach Steve Aird said in-season development is a hallmark of his program, so he hoped to achieve a similar turnaround after beginning conference play 0-9 again this year.
This past week, the squad earned back-to-back wins over Rutgers and No. 19 Ohio State. But on Friday night, it failed to execute on the road in a rematch with the Buckeyes, losing in straight sets.
“The difference that separates everyone in the conference is being able to win on the road,” Aird said. “Ohio State played great. I thought we didn’t play well and we lost an opportunity to take another step forward.”
The coach said Ohio State didn’t make any significant game plan adjustments between matches. Instead, he thought the Buckeyes simply did a better job of capitalizing on his squad’s mistakes.
Middle blocker Ashlyn MacGregor agreed with that assessment. She said the difference between games was “[Ohio State] made the errors on Wednesday, and we made the errors today.”
Overall, the Terps committed 21 attacking errors compared to the Buckeyes’ 15 errors on Friday night.
Just three players recorded positive hitting percentages in the defeat. Middle blocker Hailey Murray led the way with nine kills and a .278 hitting percentage, while outside hitter Liz Twilley and MacGregor also hit positive.
But outside hitter Gia Milana, who leads the team with 3.93 kills per set this season, posted just five kills against the Buckeyes. It was her second match in a row with a negative hitting percentage and less than 10 kills, something that had never happened before in her career.
Twilley said she expected Ohio State to start with high energy after being upset in College Park earlier in the week. The Buckeyes proceeded to go on a 9-3 run to begin the opening set, forcing Aird to call an early timeout.
The Terps could not recover from the deficit and dropped the set, 25-19. Milana had just one kill in the frame and made five attacking errors.
Maryland started the second set better than the first and did not trail by more than one point until it fell behind, 13-11. But a late 8-2 Buckeyes run turned the frame into a blowout, as the Terps lost, 25-16.
They fell by the same count in the third set to seal a straight set defeat.
Aird was disappointed the Terps (10-14, 2-10 Big Ten) struggled again on the road, even though he said splitting the season series with the ranked Buckeyes (15-9, 5-7) was a better than expected result. This season, his squad is 2-8 in away matches.
In order to become competitive in the Big Ten, Aird knows the team must improve in difficult environments.
“That’s the story of the conference,” Aird said. “You have to travel and be able to play well on the road, and the teams that can do that are usually elite.”
