BALTIMORE, MD – The Johns Hopkins volleyball team won the final two sets to rally for a 3-2 win over Gettysburg in the Centennial Conference Semifinals in Goldfarb Gymnasium Friday night.  The top-seeded Blue Jays advance to Sunday's championship match against second-seeded Franklin & Marshall, which knocked off Swarthmore, 3-1, in the other semifinal.
 
Down two-sets-to-one, the Blue Jays pulled even with a 25-23 win in set four.  After splitting the first 18 points evenly, Johns Hopkins scored 10 of the next 15 points to grab a 19-14 lead.  Simrin Carlsen, Alice Yu and Roxy Karrer all collected a pair of kills during the spree for the Blue Jays.  The Bullets rallied to pull within one at 22-21 on the hot hand of Alycen Radolovic, who collected three kills during the GC run.  The teams traded points with JHU holding leads of 23-22 and 24-23 before a Gettysburg service error sealed the set for the Blue Jays.
 
Gettysburg had a two-point lead at 6-4 in the fifth set after a Mary Huegel block, but Hopkins responded with a 6-0 run to grab a 10-6 lead.  Carlsen had two kills and Karrer added a pair of aces to fuel the spree.  The Bullets twice pulled within two down the stretch at 10-8 and 12-10, but the Blue Jays used kills from Yu and Carlsen to lock up the victory.
 
The Bullets grabbed the first set, 25-18, with an 8-2 spurt to close things out.  Up 17-16 after Johns Hopkins got a kill from Yu, the Bullets jump-started their set-ending spree with a kill from Huegel.  The Blue Jays answered with a Brooklyn Pater kill to make it 18-17, but the Bullets got two straight points on a Blue Jay attack error and a kill from Radolovic and later closed the set with a Huegel service ace and a Hopkins attacking error.  The teams had battled to eight ties through 13-13 and neither team led by more than two until Gettysburg's late surge.
 
Johns Hopkins jumped back into the match with a decisive set-two victory, 25-14.  The Blue Jays used eight aces in the set, including three straight from senior Annelisa O'Neal that turned a 4-3 deficit into a 6-4 lead that the Blue Jays never relinquished.  Hopkins later used a 10-1 run to put the set away; the spree included four aces from sophomore Karrer.

The Bullets pushed themselves to the brink of victory with a decisive victor of their own in set three as they grabbed a 10-point victory, 25-15.  Up just 12-10 after a Pamela Chiakpo kill for the Blue Jays, the Bullets responded by scoring 12 of the next 16 points to go up 24-14.  A pair of Kylie Ulrich kills and back-to-back late blocks sealed the set win for the Bullets.
 
Carlsen led the way for Johns Hopkins with 15 kills and 14 digs and Pamela Chiakpo added 11 kills.  Yu (8) and Karrer (7) combined for 15 kills and Karrer and O'Neal both had six service aces.
 
Radolovic had a match-high 16 kills and Zanza Kuba-McCoy added 11.  The Bullets also got nine kills and nine blocks from Kylie Ulrich, but GC hit just .133 in the fourth set and .087
 
What's Next
The Blue Jays will make their sixth straight appearance in the Centennial Championship match on Sunday when they host F&M at 1 pm.