Northern Colorado sweeps Montana

Saturday, October 29

Missoula, Mont.

7:00 PM

Montana

4-18, 1-11BSC

Northern Colorado

15-9, 9-3BSC

Northern Colorado

Montana

10/29/2016 9:56:00 PM | Volleyball

Box Score PDF Box Score

By: Montana Sports Information

Northern Colorado swept the Montana volleyball team on Saturday night at the West Auxiliary Gym, winning 25-23, 25-18, 25-21 to hand the Grizzlies their 10th straight loss.

With the win, the Bears (15-9, 9-3 BSC) remain within one of the Big Sky Conference leaders with two weeks of regular-season matches remaining. Montana dropped to 4-18 overall, 1-11 in league matches.

When the teams met in Greeley two weeks ago, UNC setter Ashley Guthrie had 42 assists while directing her team to a .355 hitting performance. She also added four kills on .571 hitting.

Understandably, she became the focal point of Montana coach Brian Doyon's scouting report heading into the rematch.

"Their setter is deadly, and we knew that, so we wanted to go up with her each time and try to slow her down and force them to use their pins more and go away from their middles," he said.

The plan limited the Bears to .205 hitting, but the Grizzlies, who hit .176 in the match at Greeley, hit just .081, their lowest percentage in their last eight matches.

"At times we were effective in executing our plan, but that's just a really good team that plays hard and fast," Doyon said. "That's maybe the best team we've faced in terms of their offense and speed.

"We tried to diversify our offense, but we weren't able to generate enough of it to keep us in the match."

Freshman Missy Huddleston continued her effective play, finishing with a team-high 11 kills on .300 hitting, her sixth time in eight matches putting down 10 or more kills.

Sophomore Mykaela Hammer had seven kills on .385 hitting, sophomore Cassie Laramee came off the bench to add six kills on .308 hitting, and senior Sadie Ahearn had a match-high 18 digs to move her within 17 of cracking the program's top-10 list for career totals.

Montana jumped out to an 8-3 lead in the opening set, with six of those points coming off an assortment of Northern Colorado errors, but the Grizzlies couldn't turn their advantage into a win.

The Bears fought back to finally tie it at 21-21, then used a pair of Montana hitting errors to pull out the victory. The Grizzlies had nine attack errors in the set to hit .026.

"They served really well tonight, and that put a lot of pressure on us," said Doyon. "We just weren't able to get into system enough to generate enough offense to match up with them."

Northern Colorado hit .310 and never trailed in winning set two. In the final set, the Bears pulled away from a 7-7 tie and held the lead the rest of the way.

Montana had more kills than Northern Colorado in the third set, but another nine attack errors were more than the Grizzlies could overcome.

The match, and its handful of positives, came 24 hours after taking Big Sky North Division leader North Dakota to four sets on Friday night.

"I think when you look at our growth and how we're evolving and coming around, I think there are a lot of positives," said Doyon.

"If you watched tonight's match, you saw we had a number of second- and third-chance opportunities because we were playing such good defense. That's a big plus for us."

Montana will play its final home matches of the season next week when it hosts Portland State on Thursday and Montana State on Friday. The match against the Bobcats will be played in Dahlberg Arena.

The season concludes the following week with a road trip to Idaho and Eastern Washington.