MONTGOMERY, Ala. – Faulkner dropped a three-set match in the closest way possible Saturday to get swept with scores of 26-24, 27-25 and 29-27 by William Carey at Tine Davis Gymnasium. Each set could have easily gone the other way, with close decisions, and a handful of set points had to be overcome or converted, in each period. The teams found themselves at 22 all and 24 all in each set, and William Carey narrowly outscored Faulkner by a total of 58-54. Today's match marks just the second time that the Lady Crusaders have left Montgomery with a win over Faulkner. 

After being tied 17-17 in the first, William Carey scored three of the next four points on two Lady Eagle ball handling errors and a Baylee Fairbanks kill to go ahead 20-18. Faulkner promptly stormed back with a 3-0 run on two Hannah Bryan kills and an attack error. The teams traded points from there; a kill by Alexis McInroy put her team up 24-23 before Mia Hague made one of her many big plays on the day with a tying kill. The first set ended in controversy, as a would-be Julia Rice kill was ruled an attack error that gave the visitors set point. Another error won the first set for the Lady Crusaders. Faulkner had tallied four blocks up to this point, but was able to get just one in each of the final sets.

Trailing 22-20 in the second, an error and a Haven Owings kill tied it before kills by Logan Hamlin and Gillian Tripp restored the two-point cushion to send it to set point. The Lady Eagles were undaunted again, tying it right back via McInroy and Rice kills, and again at 25 when Alysa Vinson made up for an error by firing a kill, with the sequences saving two Crusader set points. However, a kill by Elizabeth Hardouin and an error on Owings put the visitors a set away from victory.   

With the teams tied again after the first seven points for each team in the third were scored in back-to-back fashion, Faulkner broke off a 6-1 run to take a 13-8 lead, four of those points scored via errors. William Carey then made the run of the game by scoring the next eight to go up 16-13. The first six points all came on kills; three of them were scored by Hague, and Karringten Perkins and Rachel Hartmann shared the others. Hartmann, serving for the entirety of the run, got an ace before a Vinson error kickstarted Faulkner, who pulled to within one on kills by Rice and Owings. Down 20-19, two Bryan kills sandwiched around an error gave the home team a 22-20 lead before the Lady Crusaders tied it once again. Hague kills staked her team to three match points in the set at 24-23, 25-24 and 27-26, but kills by Bryan, Rice and McInroy saved Faulkner and tied it back each time. After Hague saved her team once from a Faulkner set point to tie it at 26, she got her fourth attempt at match point, and due to an ensuing error, the Lady Eagles were unable to get a save this time. The home team were on the losing end of the set despite spiking 19 kills, allowing 20 to the visitors. This was indicative of how close the Lady Eagles were in this one, as none of the major team stats saw a difference of more than five between the teams' outputs, giving Faulkner the toughest of 3-0 losses. 

Besides firing the final five kills to send her team to victory, Hague placed the entire team on her back throughout the contest. She fired 21 kills to just one error on 36 attacks, adding up to a .556 attack percentage, along with nine digs. With 21, she broke the SSAC conference single-game record of 20 kills this season, which Loyola's Simone Tyson had tied on Friday in Tine Davis; Hague accomplished this in three sets, while Tyson had all five on Friday. The former bounced back in a big way from a .00 percent night in a straight-set loss to Mobile this week. Tripp racked up 44 assists and 11 digs. Raquel Munoz, the Lady Crusaders' libero, and Hartmann had 14 and 15 scoops, respectively. Perkins registered eight of both kills and digs. 

Bryan put the finishing touches on a 29-kill weekend. She scored 13 kills, 12 digs, four blocks and 15 total points, good for the redshirt freshman's seventh double-double of the season and the tenth of her career. Rice tallied 11 kills on 16 attacks for an outstanding .625 percentage. Alyssa Stagner had 43 assists of her own for a personal record this season in three-set matches, along with seven digs. Vinson and McInroy had kills apiece; the former added eight digs, and the latter registered five blocks and four digs for 11 total points. Owings added seven kills, and libero Jordan Stewart and Sarah-Gracen Watts racked up 16 and 14 digs, respectively. 

The Lady Eagles, in terms of difference in points, came almost as close to a win as they have in this current six-game losing streak, next to the game at William Carey two weeks ago when they scored the exact same number of points as the Lady Crusaders in a 3-1 loss. Faulkner stays home for its next set of games, when Talladega and Blue Mountain will make return trips to Montgomery on October 22 and 23. The Lady Eagles will look to end the losing streak against the Tornadoes, who are just above Faulkner and behind William Carey for fifth in the SSAC, and the Lady Toppers, who currently own the top spot in the league.