MILLERSVILLE, Pa. – The Millersville Marauders hosted the Chestnut Hill Griffins in a non-conference bout Friday evening. The home team took the first two sets but couldn't get the decisive one, falling 3-2 in a full five games.
 
As they have been doing in recent matches, the Marauders took control of the initial set early on. After taking a 7-3 lead, Millersville went on an 11-1 run to bury their foes. The last three points of the run were all tallied on Caroline Halsey service aces and the 17-4 lead would represent either team's largest of the match. Halsey would go on to tally four aces in the match, a continuation of her stellar play from Wednesday's win over West Chester.  The visitors made inroads into that lead throughout the next couple of rallies but ended up falling 25-13. That would be the largest margin a set was decided by on the night; the total margin of the final four sets was just nine.
 
Chestnut Hill seemed to wake up in the second set, grabbing a 6-1 advantage out of the gates. A 5-point Millersville spurt later knotted the score at eight, but the Marauders were chasing the Griffins most of the way; their first lead would come on a block by Halsey and Taylor Welter at 18-17. From that point onwards, the Marauders were in control of the outcome of the set.  Emma Kerwin tallied kills on two of the last three points to take the set 25-23.
 
The final three sets were much of the same, but with the visitors coming out on top each time. The Marauders trailed by four at the end of the third set but managed to cut it to two with a Welter kill and a Griffin error. Chestnut Hill didn't let up, however, and took the game with a kill of its own. The score of the fourth set was tied at 23, but Griffins managed to snag final two point on a kill and a service ace to send it to five. The final set, in a similar way to the fourth, was knotted at 14 when the visitors again scored the final two points to win the match.

POSTGAME REACTION FROM BRIAN SMITH: 

• On the outcome: "They're a good team. They beat Shepherd earlier in the season, so we knew it was going to be a battle. We basically dominated the first set but the second set we had to come back and win that, but I really thought that this could go 5 sets when we walked in here. We just felt really good after two (sets), so then it feels really horrible to get the reverse sweep."
• On the message to the team postgame: "It was 'hey, don't get down; we just had three good conference wins.' We had good numbers; we hit .255 to their .155 and we out-blocked them nine to five. We just had to close."

GAME NOTES

• The Marauders took a nine set winning streak into the match and managed to extend that to 11, their longest since they won 16 straight from Aug. 26 to Sept. 3 of 2022.

INSIDE THE BOX SCORE

• For the second straight match, Halsey put together a career-best performance. She fell one kill short of matching her career-best with 14 and matched her career-high in blocks once more with five. She also had the aforementioned four service aces and didn't commit a hitting error. In fact, the Marauder middle has totaled just four hitting errors over her past nine matches while putting home 57 kills.

UP NEXT:

• The Marauders host Bowie State in their final non-conference match of the season on Tuesday, Oct. 29, at 7 p.m.