COLUMBUS, Ohio - The Ohio State (13-15 overall, 7-12 Big Ten) women’s volleyball team closed out the home season with a 3-0 (30-22, 30-21, 30-21) loss to No. 1 Penn State (27-2, 19-0) Wednesday night in front of 1,954 fans. Buckeye Katie Dull (Fr., Solon, Ohio) scored a team-high 10.5 points with Danielle Meyer (Sr., Cincinnati, Ohio) adding 10. Dull had 10 kills and added an assist block while Meyer posted eight kills, an ace serve and a solo block. Penn State’s Megan Hodge scored a match-high 17 points with 15 kills and two ace serves. Nicole Fawcett added 11 points with nine kills and four assist blocks.
Tied at three in game one, Penn State scored the next four points to take a 7-3 lead. The run included a Christa Harmotto kill, two OSU errors and a Roberta Holehouse ace serve. With Penn State leading, 14-9, Ohio State with two kills from Kaila Calhoun (Fr., Elkhart, Ind.), one each from Meyer and Kristi Hunter (Fr., Roblin, Manitoba, Canada) and a Penn State error tied the game at 14. A Blair Brown kill and an OSU error put Penn State ahead, 16-14. A Hunter kill made it 16-15 before the Nittany Lions used an Arielle Wilson kill, a Holehouse ace serve and an OSU error to take a 19-15 lead. Penn State held the lead reaching game point at 29-21 off an OSU error. A Hunter kill stopped the first game point at 29-22 but a Hodge kill closed out the game at 30-22 to give the Nittany Lions a 1-0 lead in the match. Penn State hit .350 for the game to .194 for Ohio State.
Penn State broke a 4-4 tie with a Brown kill and an OSU error to take a 6-4 lead. A Kristen Dozier (So., Sandy Spring, Md.) kill made it 6-5. Nittany Lion kills from Hodge, Fawcett and Glass gave Penn State a 9-5 lead. At 11-7, two kills from Dull and one from Calhoun cut the PSU lead to one at 11-10. At 12-11, a Hodge kill and an OSU error gave the Nittany Lions a 14-11 lead. At 15-13, Penn State scored the next three points to open an 18-13 lead. The run included a Glass kill, a Glass-Harmotto block and an OSU error. Penn State expanded the lead to reach game point at 29-18 with a Glass kill. Two Meyer kills cut the margin to 29-20. After a Penn State timeout, a third Meyer kill made it 29-21. Penn State, with a Hodge kill, ended the game at 30-21 to take a 2-0 lead in the match. The Nittany Lions hit .472 for the game to .160 for the Buckeyes.
A Harmotto kill broke a 3-3 tie in game three to put Penn State ahead, 4-3. A Buckeye error made it 5-3. The Buckeyes tied the game at five with a kill and ace serve from Meyer. Penn State, with a Harmotto kill, a Harmotto-Fawcett block and a Hodge ace serve opened an 8-5 lead. A Hunter kill and errors by both teams made it 9-7. A Penn State block from Glass and Wilson and two Buckeye errors gave Penn State a 12-7 lead. At 28-21, a Hodge kill set match point at 29-21. Penn State won the game, 30-21, with a Harmotto-Blair Brown block and took the match, 3-0. The Nittany Lions hit .185 for the game to -.143 for the Buckeyes.
For the match, Penn State hit .350 to .083 for Ohio State. The Nittany Lions had a 46-39 margin in kills and a five to one advantage in ace serves. Penn State gave up 12 service errors to four for Ohio State. Defensively, the Nittany Lions edged the Buckeyes in digs, 45-42. PSU’s Holehouse had a match-high 16 digs while OSU’s Meyer and Ami Stevens (Sr., Centerburg, Ohio) shared team-high honors with 10 each. At the net, Penn State had a 12 to four margin in team blocks. PSU’s Harmotto (six assists) and Wilson (one solo, five assists) shared match-high honors with six blocks each. Glass posed a match-high 36 assists for the Nittany Lions while OSU’s Briana McCarthy (Sr., Beaver Dam, Wis.) recorded 31.
Ohio State closes out the season, Friday at 5 p.m. in Ann Arbor, Mich. when they face Michigan (21-9, 9-9).
