Photo: UMBC Athletic Communications

Needing a victory to get into the America East Conference tournament to extend her collegiate career senior setter Allie Spaay recorded a career-high 67 assists and had 10 digs for her 14th double-double of the season while also recording two aces as UMBC topped the Providence Friars in five sets, 24-26, 25-19, 25-27, 25-20, 15-4. Prior to this season Spaay had recorded 13 career double-doubles but more than doubled that total this season with 14. Spaay leads UMBC with 942 assists, 72 blocks and 26 aces this season. She also ranks third on the team with 264 digs.

Photo: UMBC Athletic Communications

Desperately needing to get wins down the stretch to keep a chance at the America East conference tournament alive, the volleyball team picked up two crutial victories over New Hampshire and Hartford to move up to fourth place in the conference. While the entire team seemed to click in the two outings it was freshman Dalton Tolliver who dominated the competition both times out. In two matches Tolliver recorded 30 kills and led the team in hitting both times out. Against New Hampshire, which at the time was the second ranked team in the conference, Tolliver led the Retrievers with 13 kills and hit .611. Two days later, on a very emotional senior day against the Hartford Hawks, who were very desperate for a win as well, she led UMBC with 17 kills and hit .389.

Photo: UMBC Athletic Communications

UMBC picked up a much needed conference victory on Sunday afternoon when they topped Binghamton in four sets, keeping their postseason hopes alive. Leading the effort was sophomore Emily Vandegrift. Vandegrift led UMBC with 14 kills and 12 digs for the double-double as UMBC snapped a two-game slide to improve to 3-6 in conference play, moving up one spot in the standings to the fifth spot, half a game out of the fourth spot in the conference tournament. A few days prior, though in a loss, Vandegrift had a stellar game with a team high eight kills to go with eight digs.

Photo: UMBC Athletic Communications

In a week where no Retriever team won or looked particularly good in their games or matches, volleyball senior Iman Kennedy stood out with an incredibly good match at Stony Brook. Kennedy recorded a career-high 17 kills while leading all hitters with a .406 hitting percentage. She also had a team-high five assisted blocks. UMBC’s volleyball team struggled against Stony Brook in a five set loss after recording 54 errors but only four were from Kennedy, the second fewest by any Retriever that played in all five sets.

Photo: UMBC Athletic Communications

Behind an absolutely stellar defensive effort the men’s soccer team picked up two more shutout victories to improve to 7-3-3 overall and 4-3-0 in America East conference play. With the offense really struggling on the road against Binghamton Dan Louisignau made four big saves and allowed UMBC’s successful penalty shot be enough to clinch the victory. Then, in a nationally televised game against New Hampshire, a rematch of last year’s championship game, Louisignau made two saves to extend the team’s shutout streak to 408 minutes and four-straight games. The shutout was Louisignau’s seven of the season 12th in a UMBC uniform. UMBC sits atop the America East standings while allowing only 0.85 goals per game in conference play.

Photo: UMBC Athletic Communications

This season the men’s soccer team has been driven by their defense and last week they shut out two of the top team’s in the nation: Bucknell and Boston U. On Tuesday UMBC battled Bucknell, the back-to-back reigning Patriot League champions, to a 0-0 draw and then on the road they beat Boston U, the preseason America East conference favorite, 1-0. In both games sophomore centerback Daniel Welsh was a big part of the defense’s success, playing all 200 minutes of the two games combined. Welsh led UMBC’s back-line to a two shut down performances that allowed only three shots on goal in each game.

Photo: UMBC Athletic Communications

Last season Keri Wilson was a clear No. 2 cross country runner behind Sara Parkinson but season, as a senior, she has developed into one of the America East Conferences’ top long-distance runners. At the Paul Short Invitational, a meet featuring 386 runners from 44 of the nations top programs, Wilson finished 27th overall with a time of 22:53 to lead the women’s team to a 23rd place finish. Wilson has been the team’s top finisher in all three of their meets this season.

Desperately searching for something to get the offense going the men’s soccer team got a big spark from sophomore forward Pete Caringi III, who scored a goal and had an assist on the road against the Longwood Lancers. UMBC went into halftime trailing 1-0 after Longwood scored on their first shot in the fifth minute. After nearly 60 minutes the offense finally got going. Sean Rothe tied the game with a goal and 46 seconds later Caringi, on the night of his 19th birthday, redirected a shot from Joe Glos into the far post under the goalkeeper for what would be the game winning, helping snap the Retrievers’ three-game winless streak. Just over three minutes later Caringi struck again when he helped set up an insurance goal by Kinglsey Onwuka. UMBC finished the game with a 3-1 victory, their first-ever victory over Longwood.

With less than 10 minutes remaining in regulation and his team down 3-1 against the No. 1 team in the nation red shirt midfielder Sean Rothe blasted in a beautiful goal from 27 yards out into the top right corner with heavy traffic in front of him to spark the men’s soccer team to a comeback. Then, 71 seconds later he scored again into the far left post from 13 yards out to tie the game. Rothe scored two goals and had an assists in UMBC’s 4-3 double-overtime loss to the No. 1 Maryland Terrapins last Tuesday. In the 52nd minute, trailing by a goal, Rothe made a cross to Pete Caringi III, who scored a diving-header, before he put his two goals in the back of the net. Before switching to offense Rothe started the game at right back with Daniel Welsh out of the lineup and in the first half he helped keep the Terps off the scoreboard but finished the game with five points.

At this point last season Hallie Carter was being used exclusively as the team’s libero but so far in 2011 she is having an all-conference like start as an outside hitter with 111 kills and a team-high 119 digs. In four games last week Carter recorded 50 kills and 48 digs as the volleyball team went 4-1 and improved to 8-4 on the season. Carter started the week with six kills and 10 digs in a three set victory over Navy before recording three-straight double-doubles in the Maddie Bingaman Memorial Tournament, in which the team went 2-1. Carter was named to the all-tournament team with 44 kills and 38 digs.