Montana
Weber State
New season: Griz 1-0 after five-set road win
9/25/2014 12:00:00 AM | Volleyball
Box Score
The Montana volleyball team, which went 0-12 through its nonconference schedule, won its opening Big Sky Conference match of the season Thursday night, coming back from a 2-1 deficit to win 25-27, 25-21, 17-25, 25-17, 15-10 over Weber State at Ogden, Utah.
Facing a tough nonconference schedule, the Grizzlies (1-12, 1-0 BSC) had won just 10 sets all season entering Thursday's match and had gone 0-4 in five-set matches.
After falling behind the Wildcats (3-11, 0-1 BSC), Montana hit .458 in the fourth set and raced out to a 7-3 in the final set for its first victory since last November.
"We stressed that this was a new season, because even if we had gone 12-0 in the nonconference, we still would have been 0-0 before this match," said UM coach Jerry Wagner. "The team was ready to go and took it from there."
Things didn't look promising early on. The Grizzlies couldn't finish off a 23-20 lead while dropping the first set, and Weber State dominated the third, putting down 16 kills to Montana's eight, as the Wildcats went up 2-1.
But the Grizzlies, who had 18 attack errors through the first three sets, had just five the rest of the match and looked like the more experienced, polished team while rallying for the victory.
"We got contributions from everyone tonight, and we kept our hitting percentage up there," said Wagner. "And then we finally raced out on someone in a fifth set instead of getting raced out on.
"Once we built a lead in the fifth set, we turned into a side-out machine."
Montana's surprise offensive leader, and the only Grizzly to finish with double-digit kills, was redshirt freshman Tess Hellerud, who had played sparingly this season and had never posted more than seven kills in a match.
After sophomore Claire McCown struggled through the first set, with just one kill and four errors, Hellerud got the call, and she delivered with 16 kills on .281 hitting and a team-high 11 digs, despite playing only four sets.
And sophomore Michelle Robinson, who had had three straight off matches going into Thursday, had 10 kills on .346 hitting.
"Tess popped in and picked up a teammate who got off to a slow start. She went off, and that was huge," said Wagner. "And Michelle was right back to her old self."
The Grizzlies even got production out of their middles, which hadn't happened for a number of matches. Redshirt senior Natalie Jones had eight kills, and sophomore Capri Richardson totaled six on .267 hitting, with a team-high six blocks.
Sophomore setter Raegan Lindsey had 24 assists, 10 digs and three service aces, and senior setter Kelsey Schile had 16 assists and a pair of blocks, as Montana hit .212, just its second time over .200 the last eight matches.
"We were forced to get a little production out of our middles tonight, which was nice," said Wagner. "The overall play of everyone brought back memories of what the mission is here."
In the end it was enough to overcome the play of Weber State's Audrey Biggs, who had 24 kills on .281 hitting.
The second match of the new season will come Saturday at Montana State (3-10, 0-1 BSC), which lost in three sets Thursday night at Idaho State. The Grizzlies, who will stay in Ogden Thursday night, have not lost in Bozeman since 2005.
"We'll get a good night's sleep, get over to Bozeman tomorrow and see if we can put another game plan together," said Wagner.
In other Big Sky Conference matches, North Dakota, Northern Arizona and Southern Utah won at home over Eastern Washington, Portland State and Sacramento State, and Idaho won in four sets at Northern Colorado.
