Griz upset bid in semifinals falls short
11/27/2010 12:00:00 AM | Volleyball
The University of Montana volleyball team???s season came to a close Friday night with a 3-2 loss to Portland State in the semifinal round of the Big Sky Conference tournament in Portland, Ore. The Grizzlies, the tournament???s No. 4 seed, jumped out to a 2-0 lead, but the No. 1 seed Vikings rallied to win the final three sets and advance to the tournament???s championship match.
Portland State (20-8) will face Northern Colorado (24-6) in Saturday???s title match. The Bears advanced with a 3-2 victory over Idaho State (18-13) in Friday???s opening semifinal match.
Montana (13-15) was nearly flawless in the opening two sets, posting back-to-back 25-18 wins to silence the home crowd.
The Grizzlies hit .235 and held a 9 to 1 team blocking advantage through the first two sets while limiting the Vikings to .061 hitting.
Senior Jaimie Thibeault set the early tone in what would be her final collegiate match, putting down 11 kills on .667 hitting and adding five blocks.
Senior Brittney Brown sparked the back row???s defensive effort with 14 digs through two sets.
???Volleyball is a momentum game, and we carried a lot of momentum over from last weekend (when we beat Weber State and Idaho State at home to qualify for the tournament),??? UM coach Jerry Wagner said.
???The team knew it could repeat that performance tonight, so it was effortless to get ready for this match because everyone???s mind was already in the right place.
???They believed it was their night, and it was. The blocking was there. The hitting was effective. The defense was superb.
???Those things that we hang our hat on were all in place, and when that happens we???re going to test the other team???s will.???
In retrospect, the team???s superb early play would be its ultimate downfall. Had the teams stepped right back on the court for a third set, perhaps Montana would have rolled to a quick three-set victory over a team that was on its heels.
And if the team hadn???t been so dominant through the first two sets, perhaps the 10-minute break between sets two and three wouldn???t have been a key ??? in this case a negative one ??? to the match.
Coming out of the break, Montana immediately had back-to-back attack errors, and the Vikings ran out to an 8-1 lead.
The Grizzlies would not hold a lead the rest of the night.
???The team was very excited for a number of good reasons,??? Wagner said. ???They were happy with the way they were playing, and they enjoyed that they were playing well with each other.
???But it takes three sets to win a match, and the break gave us too much time to think about how well we were playing. I thought we used up a lot of emotion in that 10 minutes celebrating a little too early.
???We got ahead of ourselves. I think the thought was, How can anyone overcome how well we???re playing right now?
???We let our guard down, and Portland State is a good enough team to seize momentum when it???s out there hanging in the balance.???
Montana was never in the third set, and by falling by a 25-13 score the Grizzlies did little to give themselves any momentum heading into the fourth set.
After committing just eight hitting errors through the first two sets, Montana had 10 in set three and hit -.068.
Portland State jumped out to another big lead in the fourth set, going up 10-2. At that point the Vikings had outscored the Grizzlies after the break, 35 to 15.
Freshman Kayla Reno had back-to-back kills, junior Brittany Quick put down two kills, and freshman Megan Murphey added a service ace to get Montana back to within one, 14-13.
PSU answered with six straight points to go up 20-13.
Montana would close within two at 24-22, but Whitney Phillips, the 2010 Big Sky Conference MVP, pounded a kill to close out the set 25-22.
The Grizzlies never led in the fifth set but never lost touch with the Vikings either.
Portland State went up 9-6, but freshman Brooke Bray had two of her eight kills and Thibeault and Roberts added kills to pull Montana within one, 11-10.
The teams traded points, and PSU???s Lana Zielke finished a kill and Reno hit one wide to give the Vikings match point at 14-11.
After a Montana timeout, Reno answered with her seventh and final kill of the night.
Alexa Rosendale came right back for Portland State to finish the match 15-12.
???Game three got away from us, and then it???s an uphill battle,??? Wagner said. ???I think we represented ourselves really well in game four and started to do those things we had been doing in games one and two.
???We started to play better in game four, and game five was back and forth.???
Portland State hit .212 the final three sets to UM???s .033, and the Vikings out-blocked the Grizzlies 6 to 4.
Thibeault would finish her career with 17 kills and eight blocks.
Brown, who has spoiled Montana???s fans by making the spectacular seem ordinary, was at it again Friday, totaling a season-high 36 digs.
Stephanie Turner, the Grizzlies??? third senior, had 15 digs.
Junior Amy Roberts had 11 kills and 19 digs, and Bray added eight kills on .318 hitting and seven blocks.
Phillips, who hit -.100 through the first two sets with nine kills and 12 attack errors on 30 swings, finished with a 20-20 double-double of 21 kills and 20 digs.
In the end, Wagner was left with a postgame locker room speech that had to be part lecture, part thankfulness and part challenge.
???I told the team after the match that I???ve liked this team from day one,??? he said.
???I told them I liked the way you worked, and I liked the way you improved every single day of every week of every month of the season. Because of that, we peaked at the right time. We were ready for this moment, and you created the best opportunity that we???ve ever had.
???I also didn???t try to explain anything away. We created an opportunity tonight, and what we did with it we have to learn from. This was a tough one to take. When we get back in this situation, it???s got to be a different outcome.???
Now concluding his fifth year at Montana, Wagner continues to show his strength as a team builder. For a coach who gets chocked up reading a glowing newspaper article about one of his players, it???s hard to get angry when the team wanted nothing more than what he preaches: to put the team first.
???I think Steph said it best in the locker room,??? Wagner said. ???They were so looking forward to getting excited with their teammates again that they just couldn???t control themselves (between the second and third sets).
???I could give all the composure speeches I have, but they were really excited to be able to come in here and put everything together.
???They got a taste of it last weekend, and they just wanted to be excited with their teammates again. Whether that???s right or wrong, it says everything that this group is.???
