Bronx, N.Y. – The Fordham volleyball team capped off a 2-0 weekend with a four-set win over Atlantic 10 foe George Mason, 25-22, 20-25, 25-10, 25-22. With the win, the Rams improve to 5-11 overall and 2-3 in league play, while the Patriots fall to 2-15 and 0-6, respectively.
"Great total team effort today and happy to see our team come together after a tough second set; it's character building." Head coach
Ian Choi said, "Our team is starting to understand how great we can be and it showed this weekend."
Outside of the second set, the Rams cruised, including a near-flawless third frame, rebounding well from the visitors evening the match up in the second. Overall, Fordham hit .295 and piled up a season-high 10 aces, plus 11 blocks.
Senior
Bella Ureña led the offense with 14 kills, hitting .344, with
Whitley Moody adding 12 and both
Izzy Fichtel and
Aria De La Rosa adding nine. Fichtel hit .529 on 17 attacks with no errors, while
Megan Brzozowski matched her career-high with five kills on eight attempts, hitting .625. The junior setter added 41 assists, 10 digs, two aces, and a block for a very well-rounded effort, while joining the all-time top-10 for career assists, now 10
th with 1,442. Moody notched a team-high three aces while freshman
Ryan Naumann also had a pair of aces, with three others tallying one apiece. Naumann racked up a season-high 15 digs, as well, just two off
Mallory Lipski's 17 for the match. Fichtel led the Rams with six blocks, two solo.
In the opening frame, the Rams erased a five-point deficit and, although trailing for much of the set, rallied late to take it, using a 6-0 run down two, 18-16, to get up 22-18, including a trio of Moody kills, a Lipski ace, and a De La Rosa kill. The Patriots would rally themselves to tie the set back up with four unanswered but Fordham closed out with three straight points, first a Moody kill and then back-to-back blocks involving De La Rosa, one with Moody and one with Landeros.
The second set was George Mason's turn to rally from behind, using a 7-0 run late to get to set point, taking the frame two points later. The Rams had nine attack errors in the set compared to Mason's two, but rebounded nicely with zero in the third set, hitting .571 over 28 attacks with 16 kills. Fordham dominated the third set and led by more than nine for the majority of it.
Fordham used a pair of 6-1 runs in the fourth to take the match, both prompting visitors timeouts, first getting the score to 10-7 and soon after, 17-10. The Patriots would fight to get back within one, 19-18, but Fichtel came up with a well-placed kill and Ureña solo blocked Mason's top attacker, Olyvia Kennedy, at the net. The hosts maintained that three-point cushion and saw out the match with a pair of Ureña kills and one from Brzozowski, assisted by Ureña.
The Rams return to the road for the next two weekends, first traveling to Duquesne this coming Friday at 7 p.m. then Dayton on Sunday at 1 p.m.
