The independent student newspaper of Northeastern University

The Huntington News

The independent student newspaper of Northeastern University

The Huntington News

The independent student newspaper of Northeastern University

The Huntington News

Volleyball: Tkachuk leads way to playoffs

By Jewel Della Valle

The volleyball team clinched a postseason spot for the eighth time in 10 years with a 3-2 win over George Mason Saturday. This marks the first CAA postseason berth for the volleyball team since joining the conference just last season.

The top six teams in the CAA advance to the postseason. The Huskies were ousted from the playoffs last season by James Madison. Northeastern and JMU were tied for sixth with the same conference record (8-10), but JMU beat the Huskies in both regular season match-ups and snuck into postseason play on the tie breaker.

Northeastern hoped to get revenge on JMU this season, but lost Oct. 1 at home and this weekend at JMU, both times 3-1. The Huskies needed to beat JMU this weekend to have a shot at second place, which would have given them a bye in the first round of the playoffs.

“That’s the first thing we said before the match even started, ‘this was the team that kept us out of postseason last year,'” said sophomore middle hitter Lauren DeTurk. “[Senior co-captain] Whitney Turner said that to the team to try and get everyone pumped up and I think it worked, but we just couldn’t finish.”

James Madison took game one 25-30. The Huskies came back and had a strong win in game two, 30-21. But the Dukes proved too much for Northeastern and took games three and four, 28-30 and 17-30, for the match win.

“In the first game, they beat us by five, but we weren’t playing real sharp,” said head coach Ken Nichols. “We found ourselves in the second game. We hit about the same but the difference was we started to play defense and serve better

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