GRANVILLE, Ohio (October 25, 2022) – Playing in its final North Coast Athletic Conference match of the 2022 regular season, the Denison University volleyball team took down Hiram College 3-1 (25-19, 25-16, 19-25, 26-24) on Tuesday night inside Livingston Gymnasium.

Despite Denison winning each of the first two sets, the Terriers showed that they were there to play early on, leading 13-8 and 15-10 in the first set and 5-1 in each of the next two sets. In the third set, Hiram answered a pair of 5-0 Big Red runs by winning 12 of the final 17 points of the set.

In the fourth set, a 6-0 Denison run ending with three straight kills by Kelly McCaskey put the Big Red ahead 15-13, but Hiram answered with a 9-4 run to go ahead 22-19. With the Terriers seemingly on the verge of forcing a fifth set, the Big Red found an answer as a Hiram service error, a service ace by Alice Kempf and a bad set by the Terriers tied it at 22-22.

Then after a kill by the Terriers made it 23-22, Denison never let Hiram get to set point as a kill by Lucy Anderson followed by a service ace by Sadie Habeeb put the Big Red back in front at 24-23. The 20th kill of the night by McCaskey got Denison to match point at 25-24 before an attack error by the Terriers left them just short of forcing a fifth and final set.

Behind McCaskey's new career-high of 20 kills, Anderson finished with 15 kills while Natalie Hutras added eight, Sidney Gossard had six and Cailey Johns had five.

Defensively, Denison had four players reach double digits in digs, including Jenna Corrao with a season-high 31 digs, Sophie Tight with 14, McCaskey with 13 and Habeeb with 11.

In addition to recording a season-high in both assists (44) and in digs, Tight notched her second double-double of the season while McCaskey had her third double-double in a row and fifth overall of the season.

Denison finishes up conference play at 6-1 and is now 12-10 overall while Hiram fell to 3-4 in the conference and 12-11 overall.

Before the start of the conference tournament at Wittenberg University (Nov. 4-5), the Big Red will finish off the regular season at the Carnegie Mellon University Tri-Match on Saturday, October 29. Denison will start off against the host Tartans at 10:30 a.m. before taking on SUNY Brockport directly after that match.