Griz come up short in Grand Forks

Thursday, October 26

Grand Forks, N.D.

6:00 PM (MT)

Montana

7-17, 2-9BSC

North Dakota

24-4, 9-2BSC

Montana

North Dakota

10/26/2017 10:12:00 PM | Volleyball

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By: Montana Sports Information

After the sting wears off, after having been one of the few teams this season to have put now 24-win North Dakota on the ropes, only to see the Fighting Hawks battle back for a hard-fought 3-1 win on their home court in Grand Forks on Thursday, the Montana volleyball team will realize how much it learned.

That the process that has required so much patience is starting to bear small signs of fruit. That, when dialed into a game plan and to each other, the Grizzlies can play with any team in the Big Sky Conference. That the players they need to win are already on the team.

But tied 1-1 and leading 19-12 in the third set against a team going for its 20th consecutive win at home, Montana, which had been on the attack, eased up just the slightest and allowed North Dakota to come back swinging.

The Fighting Hawks rallied, fighting off a set point in the process, to win the third set 26-24, then pulled away from a 17-17 deadlock in the fourth to win the set 25-19 and the match 3-1.

"We've never had the team locked in in such a way this season. That's what we need to take away from this match," said coach Allison Lawrence.

"When we 100 percent, from the bench to the court, lock into our game plan and really execute on a high level what we're trying to do, we can play with the top teams in the conference and we can contend. If we learn anything, I hope it's that it's how dangerous we can be when we're executing."

(10/26/2017) VB: vs. North Dakota (10.26.17)

Two weeks after allowing North Dakota to hit .423 in its easy 3-0 sweep in Missoula, when Montana failed to reach 20 points in any of the sets, the Grizzlies limited the Fighting Hawks to .162 hitting, .148 after the opening set.

Middle blocker Jordan Vail and outside hitter Ashley Brueggeman, so destructive in the first matchup, were held to .082 hitting.

"That was the biggest thing. We executed our blocking assignments to a T from the beginning of the match," said Lawrence.

Montana entered the match having lost 13 straight against North Dakota, and the opening set played out predictably. The Grizzlies produced just eight kills on .027 hitting and were never in the set, falling 25-15.

Then three things changed. Montana got its serve-receive in order, the Grizzlies started serving with abandon and Cassie Laramee pulled off her best Lazarus impression.

The outside hitter, who totaled 24 kills over the previous seven matches, entered the match late in the opening set and had her match of the season and maybe of her career. She had a career-high 18 kills on .245 hitting and gave Montana the edge it needed.

"Cassie did an incredible job. She's been struggling to terminate and she just came in and played like a captain, like an upperclassman," Lawrence said. "She took control of the game and really set the tone for the match."

Montana went from eight kills in the opening set to 18 in the second. With North Dakota in disarray in its own serve-receive and hitting .081 because of it, the Grizzlies snapped the Fighting Hawks' 39-set winning streak at the Betty Engelstad Sioux Center that dated back to Nov. 5 with a 25-22 win.

"We talked all day about running at this team and being hyper-aggressive from the service line and being hyper-aggressive on serve-receive, and I thought we did that," said Lawrence.

"Other than their (losses at Sacramento State and Portland State), that's the most rattled I've seen that team, and it didn't happen by accident. That's something we chose to do, and I'm really proud of that."

North Dakota seemed to restore order to the match by racing out to a 5-0 lead in the third set, but a Laramee kill gave Montana its first point, and the Grizzlies steadily caught back up.

With Montana leading 12-11, the Grizzlies scored seven of the next eight points, two on service aces by Laramee, another on an ace from Shannon Casale, and North Dakota was about to go from 39 straight set wins to two consecutive losses.

"We gave ourselves the opportunity to go up 2-1, and that was probably the most gut-wrenching part of the whole night, watching that slip away," said Lawrence.

Montana, so loose in building its advantage, played tentatively just long enough for North Dakota to gain some momentum. The Fighting Hawks had five blocks in nine points and went up 23-22 on a Vail kill.

Montana setter Ashley Watkins made it 23-23 with a kill, and a Brueggeman error, despite the drastic shift in momentum, gave the Grizzlies the first set point.

But a kill by Vail, a setting error by Montana and a North Dakota service ace allowed UND to win 26-24.

Previous editions of Montana would have called it good at that point and patted itself on the back for a solid effort. So the fourth set may have been the most revealing of the night for Lawrence's first team.

After falling behind 6-2, the Grizzlies didn't give in. They scored six of the next seven points to take the lead and went back and forth with the Fighting Hawks until UND scored four straight points to break free from a 17-17 tie.

"I was proud of how we came back after that," said Lawrence. "It would have been easy after that third set to lose hope, but we still came back and fought point for point for most of the fourth set."

Behind Lia Gaogao's 27, Montana matched North Dakota with 74 digs, and the Grizzlies actually put down more kills, with Mykaela Hammer adding 10 and Alexis Urbach, playing for the first time since Oct. 5, coming off the bench for nine.

The match's big difference came on the block. Though Montana slowed North Dakota down with its own, the Fighting Hawks turned theirs into points, finishing with 14.0.

All-everything Faith Dooley, who had 10 kills on .429 hitting, finished with seven blocks, Vail added six. Five players had three or more.

"It's not that we haven't wanted to be this team all year, we're just learning how to make that choice," said Lawrence. "That makes it sound easy, like you can just choose to show up and execute, but it's a choice in how you go about your preparation and your self-management.

"We've struggled to do that, but we're learning. And I thought we learned a lot tonight."

Montana (7-17, 2-9 BSC) will face Northern Colorado (12-12, 5-6 BSC) on Saturday at 7 p.m. in Greeley. The Bears defeated the Grizzlies 3-0 when the teams met two weeks ago in Missoula.