earlier in the season,<\/a> were clear to see, with Nagel\u2019s team posting 20 errors on the day.<\/p>\nDuke\u2019s miscues continued, especially in regards to serving. Offensively, the Blue Devils committed nine service errors throughout the course of the game; however, it was the Panther\u2019s prowess in this arena that defined the match. Pittsburgh scored seven putaways on serves against Duke on its way to notching a dominant 0.326 hitting clip. While the Blue Devils did struggle to contain the visitor\u2019s attack, the improvement of the team was clear to see.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought when we got good block touches, we slowed the ball down well, and our defense worked hard to get involved,\u201d Nagel said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It didn\u2019t show up on the stat sheet, but Duke rallied to the ball well, and although they often did not produce points, the Blue Devils were excellent at slowing the game down. Whether off a dig or a finger-tip block from a defender, Duke played the game at its own pace, launching high-arching sets to the benefit of their hitters. The Blue Devil defense, however, took a serious hit when Mailinh Godschall sat on the bench talking to trainers in between the first and second sets.\u00a0<\/p>\n
With Duke\u2019s defensive anchor sidelined, freshman libero Aly Donoghue was called in. The Toronto native played in her sixth career set, earning her first assist in her collegiate resume. Although Donoghue would be subbed out for Godschall as the score reached 5-2 in favor of Pittsburgh, her teammates\u2019 reactions spoke volumes of the team culture Nagel has fostered. Every touch of the ball from the defensive backup was greeted with deafening cheer from not only the players on the court, but those watching from the sidelines as well.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAly\u2019s always hustling, always working,\u201d Nagel said. \u201cSo I think that the team is just excited for her to get that opportunity out there.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the team ultimately fell short of the outcome it was searching for, the impactful contributions of the young Blue Devils on the roster continue to give hope to a team looking to grow into expectations. Sophomore Taylor Williams paced the team with a total of 10 kills on the day, earning herself double-digits in the stat for the 13th time this season. Young players led the team elsewhere, too, with freshman setter Charlotte Glass posting 21 assists and sophomore Avery Hamlin blocking a team-high three attacks on the match.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’ll continue to work on swinging high, because these teams coming in are going to be just as big,\u201d Nagel said. \u201cAnd we\u2019ll work on that, and our coverage too, to be able to recycle a ball rather than get blocked at the net.\u201d<\/p>\n
As Duke sets its eyes on an upcoming matchup against yet another ranked ACC competitor, it does not plan to abandon its aggressive attack even in the face of a literal looming defense. Circumventing the challenge of four different 6-foot-4 players was difficult for the Blue Devils Friday, and learning how to navigate opponents\u2019 height advantages will continue to be a learning curve for Nagel\u2019s young team.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Duke stays home Sunday to battle No. 7 SMU before heading to the West Coast for two matchups later this week.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Duke did not have to travel far this Halloween to find a particularly scary matchup.\u00a0 Instead, the Blue…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22147,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[14955,73,75,74,726,14954,14953],"class_list":{"0":"post-22146","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pittsburgh","8":"tag-newsletter-bottom","9":"tag-pittsburgh","10":"tag-pittsburgh-headlines","11":"tag-pittsburgh-news","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-topstory","14":"tag-volleyball"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22146\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}