SHEPHERDSTOWN, W.Va. — After an emotional weekend, the Millersville Marauders returned once more to Shepherdstown to take on the Rams in the first round of the PSAC Playoff Tournament. They looked to avenge two previous losses to the Rams with a playoff victory. In this match, Millersville won the third set 31-29 in marathon fashion to push the match to a fourth set, but Shepherd pulled out the 3-1 victory in the end.
 
Millersville started out strong by taking the first two points and held a 3-1 lead before Shepherd went on an 8-1 run. Taylor Welter rose and put home the perfect feed off of a blockers arm at 6-9 and Mya Cascario followed with an ace to cut the deficit to two.  Madison Von Neida knotted the match at 10-all with a service ace and Emma Kerwin would bring the Marauders even again at 12-all with a kill.
 
The Rams went on a run to take hold of the set after that, but Kylee Schurig made her presence known in at the end of the first set with a pair of kills. The first deflected off of an opposing block and down while the second was a strike from the far side of the court that snaked its way through a few Rams. They hung with the hosts through the end of the set but ended up falling 25-20.
 
Millersville head coach Brian Smith tinkered with his team's lineup to begin the second set.  He moved Emma Ludwig to the outside at times and had her and Von Neida as the team's setters while Cascario filled the role of libero. It was the third time all season that Von Neida didn't don the gold jersey prior to a set. Sam White had a strike early on that glanced off the dig of a Shepherd player and out of bounds that gave the Marauders the lead at 4-3. However, the Marauders fell behind after that point due to a Shepherd run that gave them a 12-6 lead. Millersville continued to battle for the rest of the set, but a mixture of self-inflicted wounds and Shepherd's excellent play sunk the Marauders in a 25-14 second set loss.
 
The Marauders' lineup returned to normal for set three. They trailed for most of the first 20 rallies but tied the match up at 9-9 with a combination rejection from Ludwig and White.  The persistence of the Rams' middles caused problems throughout the match for the Marauders, and an attack from there incited a Marauder timeout at 13-10. The team battled back over the next 15 points, eventually tying the set up 21 with a three-point spurt fueled by the team's outside hitters. The first kill was a seed off of the right arm of Schurig that found paydirt and Welter followed that with another strike. Unfazed by the moment, the freshman delivered a service ace to tie the set at 21.
 
That induced Shepherd's first timeout of the set, and they tallied the next two points. Kerwin followed with a kill and spurred yet another Rams timeout. With the season on the line down 24-23, Kerwin tallied another kill and White followed with one more swat off of the opposition's block to push the set to overtime. The teams continued to trade points until the score was 30-29 in the visitors' favor. In that back and forth stretch, no Marauder was more effective than Schurig, who tallied three straight Marauder points via kills and four of their five scores overall. Fittingly, it was Schurig who had the hit that induced a Ram net violation to win the set 31-29 after a marathon rally featuring diving digs from Ludwig and Von Neida.
 
The Marauders held an early lead in the fourth set at 6-4. They got that sixth point on a sneaky drop shot by Ludwig that split a group of Rams and fell to the earth untouched. The Rams went on a run after that and took a 17-9 advantage, at which point Brian Smith called timeout. His team responded with their strongest stretch of play in the game, rattling off five straight points which spurred a Shepherd's first timeout. That stoppage did not deter the Marauders, who tacked on two more points and forced the Rams to their final timeout at 18-16.
 
That wouldn't be the final Marauder run, as Schurig came up big once again a few points later. Ludwig fed her on the far post and she recorded back to back kills off of a block to take a 22-21 lead. The last kill was her 20^th of the night, a game high on either side and the second most for her in her rookie season. Shepherd would go on to take the next four points, winning the set 25-22.

HEAD COACH BRIAN SMITH'S THOUGHTS:

• On the second set lineup changes: "Yesterday we put in a completely new offense for this match. We ran a 6-2 with Ludwig and MJ(Von Neida).  But when I put the lineup in for set one, out of habit I placed MJ in as the Libero which she played all season and we adjusted. The second set lineup was the one we had planned to use and worked on yesterday."
• On the season and match: "I'm very proud of the entire team for working and improving throughout the year. I'm also proud of them for stepping up down the stretch and willing themselves to make playoffs, as well as for fighting the entire match tonight."