Maryland volleyball secures first Big Ten win of season with 3-0 victory over Michigan

With the Xfinity Center Pavilion crowd rocking on the verge of a win, Sam Csire connected on a dominant spike that found a gap in the defense and killed any hope of a Michigan comeback.

Behind an excellent Csire showing, Maryland volleyball (11-3, 1-1 Big Ten) got back on the right track, picking up a 3-0 sweep victory over Michigan (2-9, 0-2 Big Ten).

Outside hitter Laila Ivey put together another high-kill performance coming off her ten-kill outing on Friday. Ivey finished the match with eight kills and hit very well with a .350 percentage, an area of struggles on Friday.

Csire put together one of her strongest performances of the season. The senior finished with a team-leading 14 kills and a stellar .290 hitting percentage. She also got it done on the defensive end with seven digs.

“I saw that Michigan was leaving a little bit of a line so I tried to test it at times,” Csire said. “In my head, I was like ‘Just switch up your shots and keep them on their toes.’… It worked out today and I’m glad it did.”

Set one started back-and-forth until a Maryland 6-0 run gave it a 20-15 lead. The run began with back-to-back Csire kills and continued with a Samantha Schnitta service ace. The Terps saw their largest lead of the set after two more Csire kills.

Maryland continued to roll with the momentum from its run. An Anastasia Russ block put the Terps on the doorsteps of the first set win, which they secured, 25-20, on a Michigan service error.

The Wolverines’ mistakes spilled into the second set as they committed two early attack errors and two service errors. Their third attack error of the set gave Maryland a 9-5 lead.

The Terps’ offense excelled in the second set, hitting over .300 as a team and stuffing Michigan at the net with five blocks. Back-to-back Ivey kills, followed by an Erin Engel service ace gave Maryland a 21-12 lead. Another Engel service ace put the finishing touches on a 25-12 set two win.

Set three was more of the same for the Terps, as they built an early lead on Csire kills and Russ blocks. Their lead sat at 12-7 until Michigan went on a 4-0 run, capped off by two kills from Kendall Murray.

Maryland went on a run of its own coming out of a timeout, ignited by kills from Ivey and Csire. The Terps continued to ride a four-point lead and finished the three-set sweep on kills from Russ and Csire.

“Going into this matchup we knew they were going to be a good serving team and I was saving all my timeouts to try and slow down many of their service runs,” coach Adam Hughes said. “Sometimes it’s situational and you gotta save the timeouts but today I went in with a mindset that I gotta do my best to also stop point runs.”

As a team, Maryland hit .296 with 14 total blocks, a dominant showing at the net. Michigan was without its head coach Erin Virtue and it showed, as it finished hitting just .146 with 19 attack errors and 13 service errors.

Maryland will look to move above .500 in conference play when it heads to New Jersey for a Wednesday matchup with Rutgers in the Terps’ first midweek match of the season.