Boise State powers past Montana

Sunday, September 8

Missoula, Mont.

2:00 PM

Montana

3-3,0-0Big Sky

Boise State

4-2,0-0Mountain West

Boise St.

Montana

Photo by: Ella Palulis/University of Montana

9/8/2024 5:18:00 PM | Volleyball

Box Score Photo Gallery

By: Montana Sports Information

The Montana volleyball team ran into a motivated Boise State team on Sunday afternoon in the finale of the 2024 Ellesyn Invitational, falling in straight sets to the Broncos. The Grizzlies, Broncos, and Utah Valley all end the tournament at 2-1 with the result.

Montana (3-3) was coming off a sweep of Southern Miss on Saturday morning while the Broncos (4-2) had a head-scratching loss to Utah Valley in straight sets later that day. They came out like a team looking for redemption and played a nearly flawless match to win 25-19, 25-19, 25-21.

The Broncos hit .275 against Montana, the first Grizzly opponent to exceed .115 in the previous four matches.

"I think Boise State came out ready to have a big response from their match yesterday and ball handled pretty well," head coach Allison Lawrence said. "It felt really tough to get them out of system, they were hitting at a really high clip, they have a lot of arms, so when you can't get them out of system it is hard to defend."

Montana started the match very well behind the stellar play of senior Paige Clark. The Grizzlies jumped out to an 8-5 lead in the opening set and Clark had accounted for six of the points by way of three kills, two aces, and a block.

It was all part of a 5-0 scoring run for Montana, but Boise State answered back with nine of the next 10 points to take control of the set. The Grizzlies would have just one more lead the rest of the match, which was a 1-0 advantage in the third set.

Clark led Montana with 11 kills on .200 hitting for the day. It was her fourth straight match with double-digit kills and she has hit better than .185 in all of them. She also had multiple aces for the second straight match and now has nine over the last four contests.

The Grizzly offense had a good day overall, as they hit over .200 in two of the three sets and ended the day aat .194 hitting. Maddie Kremer had seven kills while Sierra Dennison finished one off her career high with six kills on .462 hitting.

But Montana just had a difficult time slowing down the Broncos on the other side of the net.

"I think that the things that worked for us against Southern Miss and Utah Valley, and the weekend before, included our defense and slowing teams down offensively to allow us transition swings and we didn't get that as much," Lawrence said.

The focus of the day was on stopping Boise State's All-American Paige Bartsch. The Grizzlies did that job very successfully, holding the preseason Mountain West Player of the Year to just four kills on a negative hitting percentage.

The rest of the Broncos found openings in the Grizzly defense, however, led by All-Tournament team member Annie Kaminski. The middle blocker finished with 14 kills on .650 hitting in the win.

"I think when you have a roster like that where you're relying on Bartsch to do a lot of things, a lot of teams are going to key in on her and know she's a big threat. We went after her on serve-receive and really tried to contain her, so I think good things happened there," Lawrence said. "But they have other weapons that we needed to transition to and stop and slow down at the same time. They were able to find another answer, and we weren't able to counter that unfortunately."

The Broncos had plenty of success early on in all three sets, but Montana never gave in despite the deficit that they faced. Boise State led by 10 points in the second set, but Montana went on an 8-1 run that cut the lead down to just three points at 21-18.

It was almost the same story in the final set, when a 21-11 Boise State lead disappeared after Montana scored eight out of nine points to make it 23-20. They battled until the very end in every set. Combine that with the two previous wins on the weekend, and there is plenty for the Grizzlies to take with them on the road next week.

"You look at the scores of this match and it felt very dominated by Boise State and they earned that. I think they played a really clean, great match," Lawrence said. "But what I really like about what we can learn from this match is that we found a gear and a response to a very threatening Boise State team that allowed us to play with more intensity, more intention, and more aggression."

Montana now takes a week off the tournament grind. They will hit the road for back-to-back matches against North Dakota State in Fargo, N.D. on Friday and Saturday. The teams will play at 6:00 p.m. (MT) on Friday and noon on Saturday.

North Dakota State is. 1-4 on the year, but three of their losses have come in tight five-set matches. The Grizzlies are .500 after having a three-match losing streak snapped on Sunday. Despite the result, the weekend as a whole was a success for Griz volleyball.

"I'm thankful to everyone in this building for putting on a first-class event. Our facilities staff and everybody put on a beautiful tournament," Lawrence said. "And to go 2-1 in our home tournament, yeah you want to be 3-0, but we put teams in our tournament that we think could win our conference or be at the top of our conference and then we want to win at home to set the tone for the rest of the season. I think we were able to do that. It's hard to end on a loss, but I don't think that overshadows what we were able to do this weekend."

ALL-TOURNAMENT TEAM
Avery Shewell - Utah Valley
Annie Kaminski - Boise State
Paige Clark - Montana
Sunni Sheppard - Southern Miss