Montana
Northern Colorado
Bears get rare victory in Missoula
10/4/2014 12:00:00 AM | Volleyball
Box Score
Northern Colorado won just its second match in Missoula in nine tries Saturday night, posting a 27-25, 19-25, 25-22, 25-19 victory over Montana at the West Auxiliary Gym in a Big Sky Conference match.
Combined with Friday night's 3-1 loss to North Dakota, the Grizzlies (2-14, 2-2 BSC) dropped to .500 in league play, while the Bears (9-7, 2-2 BSC), who lost two home matches last week, improved to .500.
The difference Saturday night, in a match between one of the Big Sky's top teams and one of the teams straining to get there, was options on the offensive end. The Bears just had more than the Grizzlies.
Outside hitter Kendra Cunningham had 21 kills on .250 hitting, outside hitter Katie Champion had 12 kills on. 500 hitting, middle blocker Andrea Spaustat had 10 kills on .471 hitting, and Northern Colorado hit .271 as a team.
"We did a good job of making them go to their secondary stuff, but their secondary stuff is good. Right now we don't have those secondary options. We haven't come up with a second way to score," said UM coach Jerry Wagner.
Redshirt sophomore outside hitter Claire McCown had 17 kills on .227 hitting, and sophomore right-side hitter Michelle Robinson added 11 kills on .333 hitting.
Redshirt junior middle blocker Capri Richardson wrapped up a nice weekend with eight kills on .400 hitting, plus six blocks, but the team's other middles were nonfactors.
"We're working like crazy to run good stuff, but we only have one shot, and they got good at stopping those things. Whenever we stopped them, they were able to come up with a better secondary option," said Wagner.
Like Friday night, when Montana downed North Dakota 25-20 in the opening set, the Grizzlies were in complete control early on, building a 17-10 lead.
But a Champion kill put UNC setter Ashley Guthrie on the service line, and by the time Montana scored again, the Bears had rolled off 10 straight points to go up 20-17.
The Grizzlies played some of their most scrappy, determined volleyball of the weekend to get back into it and even earned a set point when a Robinson kill made it 24-23, but Cunningham and Guthrie had kills, and Spaustat had a service ace to close out the set for the Bears.
After the opening set on Friday, Montana was outplayed the rest of the way by North Dakota. On Saturday the Grizzlies showed a little more fight. They hit .312 in the second set and used a 6-0 run midway through on their way to their lone set win of the night.
From that point on Northern Colorado hit .333 and had just seven attack errors in the last two sets and won both comfortably.
"There were a number of good things tonight. The most important was we had good effort," Wagner said. "I thought we were working together, and there were some hustle plays that tell me we want it really, really badly, and we're willing to work for it.
"Those third and fourth sets, we were trying to grind it out and stay close, but nothing came easy for us."
With its first home weekend complete, Montana will take to the road for its next four matches over the next two weeks.
The Grizzlies will play at Northern Arizona and Southern Utah next week, then travel to Idaho and Eastern Washington the following week.
"Facing two of the better teams this weekend, I know we can take another step forward from this," Wagner said. "We went against two really good teams, and that gave us a measuring stick of what we need to come up with to get some of these teams."
In a matchup between Montana's next two opponents, Northern Arizona (12-3, 3-1 BSC) won at Southern Utah (10-5, 3-1 BSC) Saturday night in four sets to hand the Thunderbirds their first league loss.
In other Big Sky matches Saturday, Weber State won in five sets at Sacramento State, Idaho State won in three sets at Portland State, and North Dakota won in three sets at Montana State.
