Montana
James Madison
Griz hold off Dukes, win season opener
8/30/2013 12:00:00 AM | Volleyball
Aug 30, 2013
Box Score
The Montana volleyball team won its 2013 season opener with a 3-2 victory over James Madison Friday afternoon in the opening match of the Jefferson Cup at Charlottesville, Va.
The Grizzlies won the opening two sets, 26-24, 25-21, dropped sets three and four, 17-25, 19-25, then pulled out a 15-11 victory in the decisive fifth set.
It was the first time Montana has won its season opener since 2010.
The Grizzlies are no strangers to five-set matches. They played in 10 of them in 2012 but won only two. New season, new results.
"I think maybe we needed a five-gamer, and maybe we needed to work our way out of one to really exorcise all the five-game talk," UM coach Jerry Wagner said. "Now maybe we can start talking about how we win five-setters.
"We fought through, and a lot of kids contributed and got things going as the match went on."
Lizzy Briones had 24 kills on .677 hitting and five blocks for James Madison, and MacKenzie Kleespies added 19 kills and 16 digs, but Montana had the better offensive balance.
Senior Kayla Reno and junior Kelsey Schile both had 13 kills, and senior Brooke Bray added 11 on .364 hitting. Junior Natalie Jones had eight kills, and freshman Claire McCown finished with seven kills on .429 hitting in her first collegiate match.
Wagner started freshman Michelle Robinson on the right side, but Schile took most of the right-side swings and hit .323.
"I didn't start Kelsey, but when she came in she certainly allowed us to attack from antenna to antenna," Wagner said. "And I thought Claire was really solid for us. To hit .429? That's a pretty good start to the year for her."
Senior Kortney James finished with 42 assists and led Montana to a .240 hitting percentage, a mark reached just four times in 2012 when the Grizzlies went 6-23.
Senior Megan Murphey, playing for the first time since a knee injury ended her junior season last Oct. 25, dug a match-high 22 balls.
Reno blocked five balls, one off her career high. Jones and Bray both added four blocks.
Montana's season got off to a slow start in the opening set. Midway through the Grizzlies were hitting .000, and they fell behind 19-15. But two kills and a block from Reno started a rally that brought Montana even at 22-22.
Leading 24-23, Jones had the first swing to put the match away for Montana, but she was blocked by JMU's Kristi Richardson. Unfazed, Jones put down a kill that made it 25-24, and a pair of freshmen -- Raegan Lindsey with the set, McCown with the kill -- gave the Grizzlies the opening set.
Montana hit .370 in set two and pulled away from a 16-16 deadlock, James Madison hit .385 in sets three and four to even the match at 2-2.
With the fifth set tied at 9-9, Montana needed its upperclassmen to come through, and they did. After a Dukes attack error, Bray had a kill, and then she teamed up with Schile to block Kleespies to make it 12-9.
That gave Montana the winning margin it needed, and a Bray kill closed out the match 15-11.
The victory for the Grizzlies came even though they were forced to make a game-day lineup adjustment, a change that became necessary when redshirt freshman defensive specialist Sadie Ahearn sprained an ankle at Friday morning's practice.
That left McCown in the match through the back row, and she responded with 11 digs. Reno added 12 digs for an all-around, early-season performance befitting one of the Big Sky Conference's top outside hitters.
"It would have helped us a lot to have Sadie out there," Wagner said. "Her absence meant we were going to be passing somebody who hasn't passed a lot, and that was Claire. And then (sophomore) Gabby (Crowell) came in and got it going a little bit in set four, so we stayed with her in set five.
"I told them before the match that we need to be more of a team one through however many players we have to put out there. To get this five-setter brings us closer to understanding how it's going to work. A win like this goes a long way in bringing that together."
Montana will face Marshall on Saturday at 8 a.m. (MT) and Virginia at 5 p.m. (MT). The Herd and Cavaliers open their season against one another Friday night.
