Mocs Fall in Five at Home

LAKELAND, Fla. – The Florida Southern College volleyball team fell Friday night in five sets to the visiting Panthers of Florida Tech. The Moccasins won the opening two sets before the Panthers stormed back to take the remaining three and the match. Senior Sandra Sasaki led the way with 15 kills in the match while graduate student Mackenzie Petermann chipped in 13 along with a career-high 22 digs.
 
The loss drops Florida Southern's record to 14-13 on the year including 8-11 in Sunshine State Conference play. The Panthers improved to 20-8 overall and 14-5 in league action.
 
The sweep of the season series by the Panthers marks just the second time in program history that the Mocs have been swept by the Panthers in a season and first since 2001. It is also just the third time in 85 meetings that the Panthers have won two-in-a-row. The Panthers won the final meeting between the two teams in 2018 before knocking off the Mocs in the first meeting of the 2019 season for the second back-to-back victories over the Mocs.
 
Petermann also tied for the team lead in service aces with three while adding a pair of blocks including one solo. Seniors Madison Fowler and Zoe Lowe each added eight kills to the effort. The also each had one block in the loss. Senior Kiersten Kraus finished just behind with seven kills and one block.
 
Sophomore setter Mary Kate Mulvaney dished out 26 assists while digging up five balls. Freshman setter Mallory Baruch added 19 assists and seven digs. The each had a service ace as well. Graduate student libero Caroline Chambers finished with 18 digs on the night while freshman defensive specialist Taylor Zimmerman added 14 digs in just four sets of action. It marks the first double-digit dig performance of her young career.
 
The Panthers were led by Cordelia Kearns who had 18 kills and 19 digs in the win. Chiara Patelli added 12 kills and a team-high 11 blocks to lead defensively.
 
The Panthers dominated the net, out-blocking the Mocs 19-4, nearly scoring an entire sets worth of points in blocks. The Mocs out-dug the Panthers 88-79 while both teams had eight service aces. The Mocs hit .122 as a squad with 15 additional attack errors on top of the 19 caused by FT blocks. The Panthers hit .201 with just 15 attack errors the entire match including none in the fifth and final set where the Mocs had five.
 
FSC stormed out of the gates and jumped all over the Panthers taking a dominating 25-17 victory. The second set went much like the first with the Moccasins leading the way from the start. FSC took a 25-20 victory in the second set before heading into the halftime break. After the five minute break, the Panthers reversed the momentum and handed FSC a 25-16 loss in the third. The fourth was even more dominant for the Panthers as they took a 25-14 win. FT jumped out ahead early in the fifth and didn't look back as the Panthers secured the victory with a 15-7 win.
 
The Mocs will close out the regular season tomorrow afternoon at 2 p.m. as they welcome in Nova Southeastern. The Mocs will honor their seven seniors/graduate students prior to the match in the annual Senior Day Ceremony.
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