Final Stats

WASHINGTON - Georgetown University's volleyball team dropped a tough five set thriller, 3-2 (19-25, 25-18, 25-19, 23-25, 15-7), on the road at Providence in BIG EAST action on Sunday afternoon. The Hoyas fall to 6-8 overall and 0-2 in league play.

Symone Speech (Oak Park, Ill./Oak Park-River Forest) led the Blue & Gray with 17 kills while Alyssa Sinnette (Pearland, Texas/Dawson) and Olivia King (Ardmore, Pa./Lower Merion) both added 14. Paige McKnight (Atlanta, Ga./Dunwoody) paced the offense with a contest-best 54 assists to go with six digs.

Defensively, Kenzie Higareda (Woodbridge, Va./Forest Park) posted a match-high 16 digs while Speech recorded four blocks at the net.

Georgetown came out swinging in the opening set, putting away 18 kills on 30 swings for an impressive .533 attack percentage. The Hoyas led from the onset, and after an early 1-1 tie, never trailed in the frame. King and Sinnette both notched five kills in the set while six different Hoyas recorded a kill.

Providence rebounded in the second set, jumping out to a 6-1 lead to force an early GU timeout. The Hoyas would pull within three, down 13-10, but the Friars held the Blue & Gray at bay to even the match at 1-1.

In the third, both squads traded five tied scores and a trio of lead changes before PC put together a 3-0 run while up 15-14 to take a four-point advantage. Georgetown would call a timeout but, after scoring the first point out of the huddle, couldn't make up the deficit down the stretch as the Friars took the 2-1 match lead.

In the fourth, the Hoyas one-upped their first set production with 19 kills in the frame to push the match to a deciding fifth set. Speech tallied six kills in the stanza while King added five. Trading leads early, PC took a 13-10 advantage before the Hoyas responded with a 3-0 spurt to knot things up and force a Friar timeout. Battling back and forth the rest of the set, both teams saw another five ties, including late at 21-21, before three kills from King over the next six points evened the match at 2-2.

In the final frame, the Hoyas took early leads of 3-0 and 5-2 before Providence began to mount its comeback. Trailing 7-3, the Friars scored the final 12 points of the match to claim the victory.

Addison Root led Providence with a match-best 21 kills while Megan Onyundo added 16 and Lindsey Schaible had 14.

The Hoyas return to the friendly confines of McDonough Arena for their BIG EAST home-opening weekend against Butler and Xavier on September 29 and 30, respectively.