Maryland volleyball coach Steve Aird said Tuesday that serving can win or lose a set and a match.
The team saw the downside of that against then-No. 23 Michigan and then-No. 16 Michigan State last weekend. The Wolverines and Spartans out-served the Terps, who racked up 18 errors and dropped both games on back-to-back nights.
But midway through a tight second set Friday against Rutgers, outside hitter Erika Pritchard showed the upside of Aird’s point. The Middletown native, who leads the Big Ten in aces, benefited from a receiving error for her first ace. Her next serve led to an overpass kill for the Terps, and she capped off the sequence with another ace. The series pushed the Terps’ advantage to 20-17, leading to a second-set win.
Overall, Maryland again struggled from the end line, posting five aces to 13 errors. But Rutgers proved to be a more lenient foe. While the Scarlet Knights’ only Big Ten win in four seasons came over the Terps in 2015, Maryland won Friday night’s tilt in straight sets (25-18, 25-22, 25-17), surpassing its 2016 win total in slightly more than half the time.
“We played a really sloppy match for the entire match,” Aird said. “We struggled a lot with some basic stuff tonight.”
Outside hitter Gia Milana led the Terps with 10 kills, and Pritchard followed with nine. Middle blocker Jada Gardner posted eight kills with a .600 hitting percentage.
Maryland (13-4, 2-3) hit in the negatives early, with seven errors helping Rutgers to an 8-4 edge. But Pritchard and Milana combined to spur the Terps onto a six-point run, punctuated by Milana’s solo block to earn a lead they wouldn’t relinquish en route to a 25-18 victory in the first frame.
The second frame began in similar fashion. Five of the Scarlet Knights’ first six points came via Terps errors, forcing Aird to call for a timeout after falling behind 6-1. But a late Maryland push led to a 25-22 win and a two-set lead.
The Terps’ 13 service errors marked the third straight match with more errors than aces. Pritchard’s six errors was worst on the team. Middle blocker Hailey Murray said they may have been pressing too hard.
“The better the team you play, the more risk you have to take from the end line,” Aird said. “If we underhand serve the ball … we have a better shot at having success tonight.”
In a mid-match interview with the Big Ten Network, Aird said he was “pretty disappointed with our execution” through two frames. He called it a bizarre match, as the Terps combined for 18 errors in two sets yet still captured both of them.
Maryland benefited from Rutgers’ own mistakes. The Scarlet Knights hit below .100 in each set and combined for just 20 kills.
“My speech between games two and three, I told them they might want to be better at volleyball, and left the room,” Aird said. “It’s not inspiring, it’s just the truth.”
The Terps answered Aird’s call for cleaner play to close the match. In their 25-17 third set win, securing a sweep, they hit a match-high .323. Rutgers (5-12, 0-5) stayed neck-and-neck with Maryland until Pritchard notched back-to-back kills for a 14-12 lead. The Terps quickly widened the gap, and Pritchard finished off the Scarlet Knights with her ninth kill of the night.
On Saturday, No. 3 Penn State plays Maryland on the Xfinity Center main court. Aird and Murray acknowledged that the Terps’ 21-error performance won’t be good enough against the top-ranked RPI team in the country.
“It works against Rutgers; it’s not going to work against a lot of other teams,” Murray said. “Tomorrow, we have a matchup against a top-5 team. So we’re going to get in the gym tomorrow morning and try to clean it up.”
