Radford knocks off Morgan Volleyball

Makila Billingsley and Jadyn Perkins block a Radford attack in the Lady Bears' 3-1 loss to the Highlanders on Friday night. Picture by Keith Henry

by Keith Henry

TOWSON- Coming off an already rough morning match with Princeton, the Morgan State Lady Bears wanted to improve some things. Their blocking got better, but the results were the same in Morgan State's 3-1 (25-21, 25-19, 17-25, 25-16) loss to Radford in the Towson Invitational. 

Radford's Sophie Paspal had quite the night, hitting a blistering .625 with a match high 12 kills. Something that made Highlanders head coach Sherisa Livingston smile, besides her team winning the match. "Sophie is a unique player. She (like our other players) very much cares about the errors," said Livingston. "She is really spicy, which I like, but she really listens. So it makes it easy to coach her. She knows when she's doing something wrong. If she doesn't know, she's going to ask."

The blocking of Morgan State (0-5) kept the Lady Bears in it for most of the match and was the source of winning set three. In particular, the double block of Jadyn Perkins and Jourdan Page was very effective, accounting for six of the teams' 10 blocks in the match. Head Coach Xiomara Ortiz said, "We want to be a big presence. They had a goal of seven team blocks total. We surpassed that. So we are definitely a big team. We want to continue to be defensive dominant. But our first line of defense is the block. We get to intimidate some teams that way."

In set three, the Lady Bears started strong and went up 9-4. The Highlanders pushed to within three a few times before MSU pulled away and forced a fourth set.

What keyed the Radford (3-2) victory was ball placement. They placed the ball on the corners of the Morgan State defense early and often where it was just out of their reach. 

Coach Livingston stated, "This week in practice, we worked a lot on hitting different shots. Not just hitting what we're comfortable with. We got our players in very uncomfortable positions and they responded. Instead of folding, they responded to us putting them in an uncomfortable position. So I think that is what you saw in the game. It's us not thinking that the same thing is going to work over and over again. Just trying different things."

Madison Grace led the Morgan State attack with 11 kills, followed by Billingsley who recorded 10.

Radford plays Towson on Saturday morning while Morgan State challenges Big Ten opponent, Rutgers, on Saturday afternoon.