St. Paul, Minn. - The #5 UMD volleyball team showed up to St. Paul on Saturday expecting a marquee matchup with the #3 Golden Bears, and that's exactly what they got. In what was a back-and-fourth battle all night long, the Bulldogs came up just short in a sudden-death fifth set to drop just their second match of the year. UMD's record is now 19-2. This marks the first time UMD has lost on the road all season, bringing their record away from Romano to 7-1. 

If the fact that the match went five sets wasn't enough of an indication, it wasn't just Concordia that was on their A-game Saturday night. In fact, it was the Bulldogs that set the tone first.

Early in the first frame, UMD took a 2-1 lead off of a Samantha Paulsen kill. They wouldn't know it then, but the Bulldogs would never trail in the set from that point onwards. This wasn't for a lack of trying from the Golden Bears by any means. Though the Bulldogs never handed over the lead, Concordia was fingertips away from it almost the entire way through. There were a few moments where the Bulldogs held a five-point lead and looked to be in firm control of things. This includes when UMD made it 21-16, which forced a timeout out of Concordia. Something seemed to go awry when the Bulldogs took their last five-point lead of the frame at 23-18. Soon enough, it was 23-20, and UMD was out of timeouts. The Bulldogs' grip on the set wasn't as strong as it had appeared after-all.

Still, a lead is a lead. There's a massive difference between 23-22 and 23-23. The latter score is one the Bulldogs wouldn't have to experience here; they traded blows with the Golden Bears until the score was eventually 25-23 and UMD was walking into the second set with a 1-0 lead in the match. Paulsen is a key figure to thank for that- she had five kills on a .444 hitting percentage. Madison Gordon had 14 assists. 

The second set was a bit more frenetic. The Golden Bears did continue their trend of hitting the board first to take a 1-0 lead, and the Bulldogs followed suit by taking a 6-3 advantage of their own just as they had done before. Again, the two teams would fall into a kind of stalemate, though the Golden Bears still couldn't crack the code and take any kind of advantage. That is until the score was 8-8. Concordia snagged a kill by way of Sophia Anderson and looked as if they had finally made a breakthrough. Not so fast- UMD countered with a 4-1 run to retake the lead at 12-10. Soon enough, the squads were again at a crossroads at 14-14. This time, a Hope Schjenken error gave Concordia another chance to finally establish something for themselves in the set- or the match, really. The Golden Bears proceeded to do something that had been unthinkable up to this point in the match: they took a two-point lead at 16-14. This caused a UMD timeout, which was a smart one, because the Bulldogs would rally back to even things back up at 16 apiece. Another Anderson kill for Concordia to make the score 17-16 laid out the blossomings of a cruel reality for the Bulldogs. For the rest of this set, they'd be stuck exactly where the Golden Bears had been in the set prior, within some kind of purgatory. 17-17 would mark the last time this set was tied. After that, UMD kept things tantalizingly close but could never swing things all the way back in their favor. Finally, at 21 points with the score 22-21 Concordia, the Bulldogs' offense gave out completely. The Golden Bears closed out the set on a 3-0 run to take it at 25-21 and even the match up at 1-1. When it was functional, UMD's attack was very evenly dispersed in this set. Grace Daak, Cianna Selbitschka and Paulsen all tied for the team lead in kills with three. Paulsen was a beacon of efficiency once again, netting her share of kills on a .750 hitting percentage. Daak got hers at a clip of .429. Gordon had 10 assists.

Given some of the things this UMD team has done so far this season, it's a tough ask of them to surprise anymore. Luckily, the Bulldogs like challenges. So, in the third set, surprise they did. 

Of course, it would be Concordia to start things off with the set's first point. Equally as predictable was UMD countering to take a three-point lead. this time at 5-2. Concordia's pushback came early here- they'd jump out to a 5-2 run of their own to take a 7-5 lead. No bother- the Bulldogs rallied off two quick points to tie things right back up. Then... they just didn't stop scoring. 11-8 UMD, timeout Concordia. 14-8 UMD,  timeout Concordia. 19-11 UMD... no timeouts left to be found. Not that it mattered much, anyway- the Bulldogs were simply uncontainable. Mercifully, the set ended at a score of 25-16 Bulldogs. Dating back to the last time the match had been tied at 7-7, that was an 18-9 run for UMD. It was safe to say the Bulldogs no worse for wear after the second set. They'd just taken the #3 team in the country for a ride. At the controls was Selbitschka, who had a team-high five kills. Gordon had nine assists.

It felt like the Golden Bears were facing a whole different brand of adversity from when they were down 1-0 in the match after a hard-fought first set. The Bulldogs had just delivered them a massive gut-punch on Concordia's own home floor. It'd be a challenge to battle back and force an extra frame- unfortunately for the Bulldogs, the Golden Bears are fond of challenges, too. 

Early in the fourth set, Concordia looked locked-in, gaining a quick 3-0 lead. The Bulldogs took this in stride and evened things up at 4-4. From there, a familiar pace set in. Back-and-fourth, back-and-fourth, back-and-fourth. The Bulldogs did manage to hold a 14-11 lead towards the middle of the frame, but that was wiped out right away by a 3-0 Concordia run. Actually, make that a 4-0 run to give the Golden Bears a lead of their own at 15-14. This time, it was Concordia that temporarily forgot how to not score points. They'd end up with a 17-15 lead for their efforts, finishing out a 6-1 run from when they'd been down three earlier. This also forced UMD to call the last of their timeouts. From there, all the Golden Bears really had to do to lock up a date with the Bulldogs in a fifth set was hit cruise control. From the 17-15 mark, the scoring to close out this set was 8-7 in favor of Concordia. Neither team went away, but the Bulldogs simply ran out of rallies. The Golden Bears certainly didn't complain about their 25-22 set victory. Selbitschka had been the lead Bulldog in the effort to climb back in this set with a team-high four kills. Gordon had 13 assists.

As if it could have ended any other way, UMD and Concordia lined up to do battle in perhaps the biggest single set either team had been a part of all year. This seemed to have all the makings of an instant classic of a set to finish off an instant classic of a match. Regardless of who came out on top, it was all but a foregone conclusion that the other team would have battled until the bitter end. 

We got a glimpse of what that fifth set might have looked like early on, the teams in lockstep at a score of 3-3. Then, something else happened- down the stretch and headed towards the finish line, the Bulldogs' wheels came flying off, shooting into different directions. 

3-3 became 6-3. Timeout UMD. Three points isn't insurmountable, right? Well, six feels a little bit closer to that, which is what the Golden Bears' lead was up to when the score hit 9-3. Second-and-final timeout UMD. No dice. From the 3-3 mark, Concordia would close out the set on an unstoppable 12-1 run to take it 15-4 and the match 3-2. 

If you're really curious, Hope Schjenken had half of the Bulldogs' points in that set with two kills. Gordon had three assists.

There's not much else that can be done besides looking somberly down the stats sheet for an explanation. Unfortunately, not much of one will be found there. In spite of what happened in the fifth set, the Bulldogs still ended the night will impressive numbers, numbers indicative of a top-five team. UMD's offense closed out the night with 57 kills. Selbitschka led this always-impressive Bulldogs attack with 16 kills, and Paulsen had 14 on a team-high hitting percentage of .458. Gordon had 49 of the Bulldogs' 55 assists. Of UMD's 53 digs, Kaylyn Madison led with 14, but Selbitschka was right behind with 13 to accompany her offensive effort. Daak double-dipped a little bit herself, pairing 10 kills with a team-high five block assists. The Bulldogs had nine blocks overall.

The problem is that the Golden Bears had nice stats, too- often just inches higher than UMD's. Concordia had 60 kills on the night. Jasmine Mulvihill's team-leading figure for kills was 19. Teagan Starkey led the Golden Bears with 51 assists, part of Concordia's 59 total on the evening. The Bulldogs did win the dig battle, with Concordia's best being Ellie Sieling with 11 of the team's 51, but UMD would have to settle for a draw when it came to blocks. Concordia also had nine. Katie Mattson led the Golden Bears in that department with five, although hers came by way of four block assists and a solo block. 

BITS FROM BOOS:
All that these raw stats can show us is that Concordia's offense had a marginally better night than UMD's. Lost in this black-and-white figure is the fact that UMD had a match lead not one but twice on Saturday and had two different opportunities to close things out with a win. Questions still linger as to how the Bulldogs didn't get it done, what things themselves or the Golden Bears did to get to the result we ended up with. There isn't a much better place to go for more clarity on this than to UMD head coach Jim Boos. 
 
Remember that despite the outcome, this match wasn't all doom-and-gloom for the Bulldogs.  To steal the first set anywhere on the road is difficult, but to do it in an atmosphere like the one St. Paul presents is a different beast. If Boos could find reason for optimism in UMD's ability to conquer that beast, then the rest of Bulldog Country should be able to, too. 

"I was really happy with the way we came out," Boos said. "Obviously, really good Division II environment against a really high-level team, so I felt like that first set was an indicator of how this match could potentially go. If we came out and fought- even if we dropped it, if we were battling point-for-point, then I felt like 'we're here, we're going to compete, and it's going to be a fun match to be a part of,' and I felt like that's what happened. We made some plays, and we were aggressive and did enough to close out the door on that first set. Even though it got close, they still found a way to end it." 

Still, perhaps selfishly, what we're after is a kind of diagnosis, a report on the problems the Bulldogs faced in this match. Boos made some headway in this department with his comments about the second set, one the Bulldogs dropped. In spite of the set loss and the issues that it brought to the surface, Boos and company still felt reason to keep spirits high. 

"Concordia made a few adjustments, attacked us in a few spots where they have a bit of an advantage in certain rotations and did a good job of attacking those spots," Boos said. "And then, a mistake here, mistake there, we just couldn't quite get over that hump to gain momentum at the end. Sitting 1-1 going into the third, I still felt really good about where we were, I think the team felt really good about where we were, and I think the third set showed just how confident they were to get back and get ahead."

Pretty difficult to argue with Boos on that one. That third set might be among the most impressive the Bulldogs have had all year when you consider the scale of the moment. If anything, it feels like we've just taken three steps back in terms of getting to the crux of what went wrong Saturday. There's been a silver lining threaded throughout the match thus far for the Bulldogs in this synopsis. 

The fourth set was sort of carbon-neutral. Sure, it would have been nice for the Bulldogs to close things out, but they didn't get blown out of the water. As mentioned earlier, they just ran out of match to play with when it came to closing in on their minor deficit. Certainly no reason to cheer, but also not a reason to panic. 

The fifth set, on the other hand...

Good teams have sets where they remind you how good there are. Good teams also happen to have sets where they remind you that they're human. It just so happens that both of these events occurred simultaneously within this final frame. A perfect storm for Concordia was about as big of a nightmare as it ever could have been for UMD. What Boos saw in the eye of that storm? Relentless serving. 

"Watching (Concordia) from last night's match... they served like (they did in the fifth) the entire match last night and had St. Cloud very uncomfortable, and so that was the fear is that that was where they were going to be right out of the gate," Boos said. "I thought we handled it- they still got theirs, and they still made us uncomfortable throughout the first four, but in that fifth set, they really got to us and made us uncomfortable, and we were just not able to turn it into any sort of offensive momentum.. You saw where we were offensively in sideout percentage. If you're in the 60s, you're going to be competitive. If you can get into the mid-to-high 60s and into the 70s, you're looking at a really good chance to win, and that's really how the match had gone, and then we just couldn't get anything going in that fifth set. And we tried, tried to break up the rhythm, took some timeouts, but volleyball is a momentum-driven sport, and they had it, and we just couldn't get it back."

Notice that even in his depiction of one of the bleaker moments of the entire season for the Bulldogs, Boos still made it a point to mention his team's impressive offensive efforts in the lead-up. Perhaps this search for some elusive answers for the outcome of this match was a complete wash. Perhaps it's as simple as this: the Bulldogs had a bad fifth set. They had a bad moment, a moment within a series of moments in the match, many of which were actually quite promising for the Bulldogs. Maybe the focus of this search was all warped; after all, we had to pierce through a lot of good to get to a few rallies of bad. 

It seems as if Boos would agree. All of the things that went the Bulldogs' way in this match don't counteract the fifth set or erase it from the record books. The way this match ended will still sting in isolation from anything else. However, that fifth set doesn't have to define this Bulldogs team moving forward, much like they didn't allow themselves to be forever debilitated by the loss to #1 Wayne State earlier in the season. In fact, UMD has only climbed the standings since then. There's no reason to believe that the Bulldogs can't pull something similar off after tonight. Just ask Boos. 

"It's kind of what I talked to the group afterwards about," Boos said. "There's so much that we should be proud of with what we did today and how we competed and the things we did to make that a really good match. Obviously, we're all going to be disappointed in the outcome and how it ended with the finish and how we played, but the way we competed there and the adjustments we made from where it was against Wayne State to today, I think we've made some growth. Like I told them, that's the level we're going to see in conference tournament play, and if we're fortunate enough to make it to a regional, that's what you're going to be seeing. This is a great learning opportunity for us- certainly, you'd rather do it with a win, but there's so much to gain from what we experienced tonight that that's what we've got to take from it as we focus on what's next. "