BUFFALO, New York – The Marist volleyball team lost its season opener on Friday morning, 3-0 to the Alabama Crimson Tide. The match was the first of six total matches to be played at the University of Buffalo Invite.

With the loss, the Red Foxes fall to 0-1 to start the season, while Alabama gets off to a 1-0 start to the new year.
 

SUMMARY

• Senior Stephanie Stone picked up her first block of the season on the very first volley of the game, getting the Red Foxes out to a 1-0 lead. Marist would ride that momentum out to an early 5-2 advantage.
• Alabama battled back and evened up the set at 13-13, before closing out set one on a 12-7 run to earn a 25-20 victory in the set.
• Set two was controlled throughout by the Crimson Tide. Alabama took a 9-4 lead to begin the set, and never looked back. The Red Foxes would close the gap to two mid-way through, but the Crimson Tide fended off the run and cruised to a 25-19 victory.
• The Red Foxes bounced back early in set three, riding the momentum of kills from senior Megan Fergus and junior Sarah Austin to a 7-3 lead.
• Alabama evened up the score at 8-8, and from that point there were four lead changes and five ties leading to a 16-16 stalemate.
• The Crimson Tide closed out set three on an 11-1 run, giving them a 25-17 victory in the set, and a 3-0 victory in the match.

STATS

• Fergus tied for a match-high with nine kills. She also tied for a match-high with five total blocks, and led Marist qualifiers with a .182 hitting percentage.
• Senior Nikki DeSerpa was second on the team with six kills, while Austin followed her up with five.
• Ginger Periner was the leading attacker for the Crimson Tide, accumulating nine kills on a .333 percentage.
• Meghan Neelon had a match-high 32 assists, and added three kills.
• The Crimson Tide had 33 total digs, while Marist had just 24. 

NOTES

• With her six kills today, DeSerpa officially cracked Marist's career kills list, moving into 10^th place with 931 career kills.
• In her first career match, freshman libero Sophia Theriot led the team with eight digs, and tallied her first two career assists. 
• Sophomore McKinley Fox made her second career start, and first as the primary setter for the Red Foxes. She tallied 26 assists, falling three assists shy of matching her career-high. 

UP NEXT

The Red Foxes return to action tomorrow, August 31 and will close out the UB Invite with a doubleheader. Marist will take on Colgate at 1:30 p.m., and then Buffalo at 6:30 p.m.