FAIRFIELD, Conn. – Fairfield University Volleyball improved to 10-0 in the MAAC and ran its winning streak to 11 straight matches with a 3-0 victory over visiting Iona on Sunday afternoon at the RecPlex.
KJ Johnson and
Mikayla Haut paced the Stags' attack with 13 and 11 kills, respectively, from the outside.
The Stags stand at 15-6 overall and 10-0 in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference. With today's victory, Fairfield has clinched a winning season of conference competition for the 26th consecutive campaign. The last time the Stags finished below .500 in the MAAC was in 1995 – the first year of Head Coach
Todd Kress's first tenure at Fairfield.
The win also snapped a four-match winning streak for Iona, which falls to 7-11 on the year and even 5-5 in the MAAC. The Stags took the match by set scores of 25-16, 25-16 and 25-18.
Johnson continued her standout season on the outside with 13 kills on .500 hitting (13-1-24). The 11 kills for Haut marked the fifth double-digit kill performance for the reigning MAAC Rookie of the Week.
Luci Albertson added nine kills from the right side, her highest output since moving from the middle to the pins.
In the middle for Fairfield's attack,
Ella Gardiner had five kills on .400 hitting (5-1-10) and
Emily Schillinger put down three of her four attempts for a .750 clip.
In total, the Stag hit a scorching .366 engineered by
Manuela Nicolini. The three-time MAAC Setter of the Year had 36 assists and dumped over six kills of her own on errorless swings to boost the team's percentage.
With her contributions today, Nicolini eclipsed the 4,000-assist mark for her career. The third Stag to ever record 4,000 career assists, Nicolini currently sits third all-time in program annals with 4,018 career helpers.
Rounding out the scoring,
Morgan Doll and
Maddy Jerdonek each served up an ace.
Fairfield's defensive effort was led by eight blocks. Johnson, Gardiner and Schillinger each had a hand on four rejections, with Haut getting a piece of two sendbacks. In the back row,
Georgia Via donned the libero jersey and led all players with 15 digs. Nicolini added nine, with Doll and Johnson each posting six.
All told, the Stags limited Iona to a .123 hitting percentage with 33 kills and 20 errors for the guests.
"I thought we were very in tune with executing our gameplan against a very good Iona team," said Kress. "Iona has two of the better middles in the MAAC, and we knew that if we let them score at will, it was going to pose a problem. They both had some kills, but not their normal volume."
The middles in question were Jen Soto and Fleur Wiersma, who recorded five and four kills, respectively, but took just 18 of the Gaels' 106 swings on the afternoon.
Up next, the Stags will travel to Marist on Thursday to play the Red Foxes – the one MAAC team they've yet to meet in 2021 – before returning to the RecPlex on Saturday and Sunday to host Niagara and Canisius.
"This may be our toughest week of the season coming up with three matches in four days against quality opponents," Kress said. "But we have what it takes to be successful during this stretch if we focus on our gameplan, control our side of the net and not get frazzled when we make a few errors."
