HAMPTON, Va. – Just when the chips were down for the Norfolk State volleyball team on Friday night at Holland Hall, the Spartans dug themselves out of the depths of defeat to hand their bitter rival a deflating loss. Hampton, buoyed by a pair of big performances, pushed NSU to the limit before the Spartans came away with a 3-2 win over the Pirates in the Battle of the Bay.
 
The conference match featured a pair of sets that went into extra points, with NSU winning set 2, 27-25, and Hampton taking the fourth set by the exact same score to stay alive. The Pirates led at the beginning of the contest after winning the first stanza, 25-19, but NSU won the second and then the third, 25-20, for a 2-1 lead.
 
Hampton had all the momentum after a late rally in the fourth set, just when it seemed the Spartans were primed to win in four. NSU let a seven-point lead slip away and then went down by two in the fifth set.
 
In the end, the Spartans could not be denied, surging ahead one final time in a 15-12 fifth-set win.
 
NSU, which improved to 3-2 in the MEAC and 5-13 overall, had to overcome two huge offensive performances from a pair of Pirate players in Micah Leavell and Reeana Richardson. Leavell posted 30 kills and hit .490, while Richardson added 22 kills. The duo combined for 52 of the team's 65 kills in the contest.
 
The Spartans had a trio of player combine for more than 85 percent of their kills. Jessica Johnson led the way with 20 kills, the fourth time in the last seven matches the senior tallied at least 20. Junior Clarke Tyler hit .478 with a career-high 14 kills, while senior Dominique Parker added 13 kills on a .375 attack percentage as NSU time and time again exploited the middle of the court.
 
Together, the threesome had 47 of the team's 54 kills. They helped NSU hit .262 on the night, compared to a .277 clip for the Pirates.
 
Johnson, as she has all season, came up big when the Spartans needed her the most. After starting the match off strong, Johnson finished strong by tallying six of the team's eight kills in the fifth set. She had a couple early after the Pirates had won three of the first four points. Those two kills, along with a service ace from junior Melvina Brown, put NSU ahead by one before Hampton won the next three points for a 6-4 advantage.
 
The Spartans then began their big, final push, using three more kills from Johnson to spark a 7-2 run. That put NSU up 11-8, and after the Pirates cut the deficit to 13-12, an error on Hampton and a block from Tyler and freshman Jill Aquino finally ended the marathon.
 
It only reached that point because Hampton (3-14, 2-4 MEAC) got eight kills from Leavell during the fourth set, one in which the Spartans won five of the first six points. They eventually went up by as much as seven at 16-9. Brown capped that run with another service ace, but the lead slowly began to disappear. It started when Hampton won four in a row to get to within three.
 
Despite that, NSU still led 24-20 after a kill from Johnson. But with their backs to the wall and facing imminent defeat, the Pirates held off four straight match serves by the Spartans. Leavell had three straight kills followed by two service aces from Summer Humes.
 
After an HU service error tied the score at 25-25, Leavell had two more kills to keep Hampton alive for the final set.
 
Hampton tallied an unheard of 17 kills in the first set, forcing NSU to flip the momentum. Leavell had seven of those kills during the opening set, including a couple early on as Hampton jumped out to an 8-2 lead. The Spartans were within three a couple of times but could not get anything else going before the Pirates found themselves up 1-0.
 
Johnson and Clarke combined for all nine of NSU's kills in the second set, which again found the Spartans down early, 6-2. But that momentum switch finally arrived, as a 6-1 run, which came shortly before a 7-2 run, allowed NSU to jump ahead. That second run ended on two aces from Brown and a kill by Tyler for a 16-12 lead.
 
It did not last, though, as Leavell sparked Hampton to an eventual 20-19 lead. But thanks in part to a couple of kills from Parker, NSU won five of the next six points for a 24-21 lead. Hampton won three straight and held off set serve from the Spartans four times altogether before Tyler closed out the set in extra points with back-to-back kills.
 
NSU ultimately went up 2-1 in the match because of a late run in the third set. The stanza began, not surprisingly, with plenty of back and forth play. Facing a 15-13 deficit, the Spartans won seven of the next eight points for a 20-16 advantage. They had three blocks during that time to spark the rally after tallying zero during the first two sets. NSU later won four of the last five points of the set for its 2-1 lead heading into set 4.
 
In the end, Hampton held an 11.5-6.0 edge in blocks for the match, with Tyler having a hand in four of those six stuffs for NSU. Kyndall Nicholas, on the other hand, had nine blocks for the Pirates
 
Despite playing five sets, including two in extra points, the Pirates only led NSU by a 46-36 margin in digs. Brown had 15 of those for NSU to go along with six service aces.
 
Tyler and senior Alex Irizarry each had three aces, part of a team total of 14.
 
The Spartans will again be on the road on Sunday, this time with a little farther to travel when they trek to Delaware State for a 3 p.m. matchup.