Mankato, Minn-  "Any given Sunday." What a wonderful phrase, one that captures the totality of the chaos possible within sports. Still, a match like the one the UMD volleyball team won 3-1 against Minnesota State on Friday makes you wonder if the saying should expand its scope within a different arena: the calendar. 

The Bulldogs entered this matchup with an 18-1 record, a 10-1 conference record, the #5 ranking in the entire country. The Mavericks came in 6-13 overall. Early on in the first set, these figures seemed to make a lot of sense. UMD jumped out to a booming 8-3 lead on the Mavericks' home court, forcing a Minnesota State timeout. Samantha Paulsen alone had three kills in this stretch. All seemed like it would go according to plan, follow the script that seemed pre-destined on paper. 

Not so fast.

Quicker than you could make a determination of what to get for dinner after the match was over, the Mavericks were within two at a score of 10-8. Not long after that? It was 14-13, Minnesota State was right on the doorstep of a tied set, and UMD called a timeout. 

In searching for answers, a good place to start might be with the Bulldogs' five attacking errors up to the 14-13 mark of the set compared to just one for Minnesota State. In defense of the surging Mavericks, two of those errors were caused by blocks. It should be no surprise that defense-extraordinaire Kiya Durant found herself involved in each of those. Get used to hearing that name. 

But there would be a lull from Durant for the rest of the set, which aided the Bulldogs in making a big 6-3 run to secure a 20-16 lead and force the last of the Mavericks' timeouts. That lead would eventually cap at five at a score of 22-17 UMD. Something that should be understood even now is that you shouldn't count out this Minnesota State squad, and UMD head coach Jim Boos certainly didn't. The moment the Mavericks made it 22-19 off of two quick points, the second of which being on a block from Emily Kern and Elizabeth Dillie, Boos called a timeout to calm his troops. This, combined with UMD's earlier efforts to secure a cushioned lead, proved to be enough to will the Bulldogs over the finish line. All they needed was to maintain a hair's distance away from the Mavericks to secure the set, and that's exactly what they did, closing things out at 25-21 on the back of a 3-2 run. Cianna Selbitschka was massive for the Bulldogs, entering set two with six kills. Madison Gordon had 18 assists. 

It wasn't easy, certainly not as easy as on-paper stats showed it might be, but ultimately the final result, the one that matters the most, was about as expected for the Bulldogs. Then the second set happened. 

In retrospect, it shouldn't have been such a shock. The Mavericks had shown massive amounts of heart by battling back from a deep hole early in the first set, regardless of the set's closing result. Hindsight was nowhere to be found in the moment; when Minnesota State took a commanding 7-2 lead in the second set to force an early timeout from UMD, rationale was hard to find. Well, the stats themselves made it pretty clear what was happening: UMD was putting themselves at a massive disadvantage. In this set, it took the Bulldogs only nine total points to have four attacking errors. This time, none of them were the results of blocks. 

Things didn't get much better for UMD for a long while. They'd cut the lead down to four at a score of 12-8, but this would be short lived. In fact, the Mavericks merely improved upon their earlier lead by taking a 20-14 advantage, forcing the last of UMD's timeouts for the set. 

In what had been a bleak set for the Bulldogs up to this point, they finally started to provide reason for optimism out of the break. A 4-1 run closed by two blocks headlined by Hope Schjenken made the score 21-18 and pried a timeout from Minnesota State, who was clearly feeling the pressure. It's a wonder what a timeout can do- just ask the Mavericks. They'd close the set on a 4-1 run to take it 25-19 and leave the match knotted up at 1-1. In this stretch, a familiar foe made her presence known in the least opportune time. Durant was a part of the three blocks that made up all but one of the Mavericks' points in their set-closing run. By this point, she had seven block assists on the night. For the Bulldogs, Selbitschka again led the team in kills, but her total tally was just three. Gordon again led the team, this time with six assists.

It's hard to articulate the importance of the third set in a match like this for the Bulldogs, a road juggernaut who's clearly shown to the home Mavericks that they can be made to look mortal, at least on this night. The bad part is that it was pretty important for Minnesota State, too. Early in the set, the Mavericks certainly played accordingly.

For the second straight set, Minnesota State had developed an early cushion, this time a four-point lead at a score of 7-3. This time, though, the Bulldogs wouldn't wait as long to start mounting a comeback- all throughout the middle portions of the third frame, UMD scratched and clawed their way towards an even affair. The Mavericks would cling to marginal leads until a score of 12-9. That's when Paulsen decided to put on a show- she racked up three straight kills to knot the score up at 12-12 herself. Then, disaster struck. Fresh off of such a massive rally, a UMD service error handed the lead (and the ball) right back to the Mavericks. This could have been a crippling moment for this UMD club, one that had worked so hard to stay in it only to seemingly lose their chance. Instead, the exact opposite was true. The Bulldogs went on a 6-0 run after the error to take a five point lead at 18-13 that almost felt improbable earlier. Better still, the Bulldogs had forced Minnesota State to use each of their timeouts during this huge swing in momentum, one the timeouts hadn't dampened. Sydney Lanoue stepped up in a big way during this run, recording half of its points with three kills. Unlike in the first set, with a big lead in-tow, the Bulldogs didn't pull their foot off of the gas. They closed out a ginormous third set performance on a 7-3 run to close it at 25-16 and take a 2-1 lead in the match.  Fittingly, Lanoue was the Bulldogs' offensive MVP here, ending the set with five total kills on a hitting percentage of .308. To their credit, both Paulsen and Selbitschka had big sets of their own, each of them recording four kills with hitting percentages of .600 and .444 respectively. Gordon had 11 assists to lead the team.

By this point, the pulse of this match had registered all over the place. Within the fourth set, a kind of comfortable stability was found. 

For the first time all match, neither team took an early lead that held much substance. The Mavericks did take a 6-3 lead, but it was carved down to 6-5 right away. 7-7, 9-9, 10-10, back and forth the set went. For as close as the set had been up until this point (clearly), the Bulldogs had only held a lead very briefly at a score of 9-7, one that had been washed away with two straight Maverick points. It took some work, but UMD was able to break out of the 10-10 stalemate with another lead, barely out-dueling the Mavericks on a 6-5 run to leave the score at 16-15 Bulldogs. To tell you how tight of a set this was, this kind of run was enough to force a timeout from Minnesota State. It was smart thinking from Mavericks head coach Corey Phelps, because his team certainly responded. The Mavericks would go on a huge 3-0 run to retake the lead at 18-16 and force UMD to call a timeout of their own.

This was an absolutely pivotal moment in the match for this UMD team, one that had gotten every bit of their money's worth in this fight with Minnesota State and then some- or maybe some isn't even the right word there. For the Bulldogs to allow the Mavericks to snag this fourth set and enter a winner-take-all fifth frame with all the momentum and a home crowd cheering them towards victory would throw them, the #5 team in all of the land, into a disadvantage. Instead, UMD closed out the set like you might expect a top-five team to. The Bulldogs caught fire out of the break, rifling off a 9-3 run to take the set 25-21 and escape Mankato with a 3-1 match victory. All but two of these closing points were Bulldog kills. Talk about ending things with authority. 

Speaking of kills, Selbitschka again led the Bulldogs in that department in the final set with six. Gordon had a team-high (and set-high for the day) of 19 assists. 

This was not a pretty win for UMD, but not all of them are. And even though the match was closer than they had hoped for it to be, the Bulldogs still closed things out with some pretty strong stats. For example, Selbtischka ended the night with 19 kills. Not only is that a season-high for her, but it's a team-high for kills since Paulsen had 19 of her own all the way back in the season-opener against Drury on August 26. Gordon's 54 total assists? Her highest mark since netting 66 against Missouri-St. Louis on September 2, and her third highest assist offering all season. To round out the team-leaders for the day, Kaylyn Madison had a Bulldog-high 20 digs while Grace Daak led the way with three block assists. 

Minnesota State's stat sheet is something to behold. Their best attacker in this match was Emily Kern with nine on a strong .381 hitting percentage. The key ball distributor for the Mavericks was Brooke Bolwerk with 29. Ellie Kline led the way with 14 digs. These figures are certainly lower than the Bulldogs' offerings, but then you get to another stat line: blocking. The Mavericks managed 15 total blocks on the Bulldogs, Minnesota State's second-highest total the entire season. Durant alone had ten block assists and a solo block. She and the rest of the Maverick defensive front was all that it was advertised to be heading into the match, but the Bulldogs' equally-touted offense won the day. 

BITS FROM BOOS:
In picking apart the details of this match after the fact and trying to figure out what kept it so close, it's hard not to get hung up on those blocking tallies from the Mavericks. Durant is the obvious standout, but Boos wanted to be sure that other members of the Mavericks' block party got their due credit as well. 

"I thought Sophie Tietz, their right side, had a really impactful match physically at the net with blocking as well," Boos said. "We even struggled at times with their setter (Brooke Bolwerk), trying to attack her with her being a little smaller, and she was still able to do some good things for them. For all of them, it presented a very big challenge for us. We were certainly uncomfortable all night long." 

Boos wasn't done distributing some kudos to Minnesota State. While the combined blocking efforts of the Mavericks might be the numbers that pop off of the page, Boos was sure to highlight another aspect of the Mavericks' play that made things challenging for his team throughout the night: their setting. 

If you can break your gaze from the 15, you'll notice towards the middle of the stat sheet that the Mavericks also had eight service aces throughout this match. Even when Minnesota State wasn't racking up points directly off of the hit of the serve, their stout serving ability across the board was tough for the Bulldogs to handle. In fact, Boos thought this is what really made the engine of the Mavericks hum as well as it did on Friday night. 

"The blocking is the end result, but the key honestly was they served really aggressively," Boos said. "Especially at the times when we were struggling... they took away our ability to run tempo and to be in-system enough to set multiple hitters. When that was the case, they did a really nice job of keying in on what we were doing and taking away a lot of our natural tendencies of what we try to do."

All of these individual facets of the Mavericks' performance are nice to highlight, but it's important to consider the impressive effort of Minnesota State as an entire unit. Boos did just that.

"It certainly didn't feel comfortable at any point in time until the last point was scored, and you credit Mankato for that..." Boos said. "Even after we pulled away at the end of the first set and they had some service mistakes, they came out right away in that second set, and you could just tell they were there for business, and they weren't affected by losing that first set at all. That just teaches you the lesson that in this league, every match and every night is going to be a battle, and you have to bring your best. And when you're not playing your best, you have to continue to grind and try to find different ways to get it done."

Tonight seemed to situate itself within the latter of those two categories for the Bulldogs.

Of course, their offensive totals were nothing to shake a stick at- in fact, UMD's 64 total kills marked their fourth-highest night of kills for the entire season. Even still, it can't be overlooked that this kind of performance came with 31 attacking errors, tied for the second-highest mark in that category for the Bulldogs this year. Stats aside, something about the intangibles of a night like this felt off, much different than the 3-0 home sweeps of last weekend. 

This wasn't lost on Boos. In fact, he's picked up on this being a trend throughout the season. 

"It just shows that we've kind of been two different teams this year," Boos said. "There's moments when we're in control of the game and we run really smoothly and things seem to flow in-system and with tempo, and it really looks like we have a good grasp of everything. Then we have matches like we did tonight... where really, we're kind of hot and cold, we're hit and miss, and then we have to grind our way through and find a way to battle and to make big plays at big moments." 

Even if this Bulldogs team is really two squads manifesting itself as a single unit, it's pretty tough not to marvel at the fruits of their combined efforts so far. With this win, UMD sits at a record of 19-1. They're still undefeated on the road. Wins are wins, regardless of whether it's the A+ team of the A- team that's racking them in. While the latter squad might have been on display Friday night, they still prevailed, fighting through a tough Mavericks block with an offensive output that often finds a way to shine for UMD one way or another.

"The biggest thing we just kept trying to sell to them was we needed to be in-system, we needed to move the ball around, and we needed to continue to be aggressive- we couldn't be intimidated by the fact that we were getting blocked," Boos said. "When you can win in a match getting blocked that many times but still end up averaging 16 kills a set, it tells you that they did do some of the things that we were needing and wanting them to do in terms of being in attack mode."

In spite of all of this, with a match-up against #3 Concordia-St. Paul around the corner on Saturday at 5:00 p.m., the Bulldogs would be wise to plan accordingly in terms of which of their teams will be hitting the court.