Box Score Seniors
Monica Turner and
Mariah Scharf made themselves the 17th and 18th players all-time to reach the 1,000 kill plateau in their careers, but the top-ranked University of Minnesota Duluth fell in five sets against No. 5 Southwest Minnesota State University in Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference play on Friday night in Marshall, Minnesota.
For No. 1 UMD (13-4, 6-2 NSIC) the loss signified history both for its top fourth-year attackers and for the team overall: the first time the Bulldogs had fallen in back-to-back matches since the end of the 2011 campaign, when they were bested by Southwest Minnesota State and Minnesota State University Mankato on Nov. 11-12. Despite a valiant comeback from down 2-0 against the Mustangs (13-3, 6-2 NSIC), UMD fell 15-12 in the fifth set after taking games three and four 25-19 and 25-22 after falling behind 2-0 on scores of 25-14 in game one and 25-22 in game two.
Turner cracked her 1,000th career kill for UMD's first point of game two, needing just one kill entering play on Friday night to reach the mark. For Scharf, it was in game four as she totalled a match-high 28 kills on the night as she needed 20 to reach the benchmark.
Final full-match statistics have not yet been made available as of this writing.
UP NEXTUMD continues its road trip tomorrow afternoon with an early start time - 2:00 p.m. - as the team takes on the University of Sioux Falls in Sioux Falls, S.D.