THE OPENING SERVE:
A UMD volleyball team that was ranked #5 heading into Friday split its slate of matches for the weekend. A gutsy 3-1 victory against Minnesota State in Mankato was followed by a 3-2 loss to #3 Concordia in St. Paul, one that is still tough to swallow given how hard the Bulldogs played throughout. This was just the second time in the season's eight weeks so far that UMD has dropped a match. It was the first time they've lost on the road all year- they'd been 7-0 beforehand. 

All of this sank the Bulldogs' record all the way down to... 19-2.  The AVCA was moved enough by what they saw to change UMD's national ranking this week to... #4. 

Two things can be true at the same time: a team can play well in a week and still end up with something to feel somber over. This is especially true within programs that have a standard of success, and UMD certainly fits the bill as that type of program. Within this season in isolation, losses to teams like #1 Wayne State or the #3 Golden Bears represent a next step still to be taken for a team that already has national pedigree- not a lot of steps left up that ladder. Hey, at least it's not last season, one that head coach Jim Boos and players alike now reflect on as a disappointment, one where a lot was left on the table. The Bulldogs finished last year with a record of 18-11.

Life is often a game of relativity. 

When you've had the kind of track record that they've had over the last few years, the last decade, all of the two-plus decades of Boos' head coaching tenure, it's hard to blame the Bulldogs for allowing situations like this to sting, to consider them moments of underachievement in the grand scheme. Not every team has had a Boos in recent memory, nor his 19 seasons of at least 23 wins since the turn of the century. Not every team has nine conference championships (between the NSIC and the NCC) in that kind of span. Not every team has had a Kate Lange,  a Katie Gangelhoff, a Sydnie Mauch to make these kinds of things possible. 

Enter Minnesota Crookston and Bemidji State, UMD's pair of opponents for the week. Both of these squads are hoping to see the fruits of their current labor turn into futures as bright as the Bulldogs' present- if not brighter.

Crookston will get the first shot at taking a big step in that direction when they head to Romano for a matchup against UMD on Thursday, October 20 at 6:00 p.m. Bemidji will be up to bat next on Saturday, October 22 at 4:00 p.m. in a match they'll have the comfort of playing at home. 

SCOUTING REPORT ON MINNESOTA CROOKSTON:
Nick Meseck entered the Minnesota Crookston volleyball program in 2021, his first assistant coaching gig at the Division II level. Meseck had found his start just four years earlier as an assistant coach at Northern Cass High School in Hunter, North Dakota. He then made the jump to junior college with a spot on North Dakota State College of Science's coaching staff in 2019. A role in the MSU Moorhead program in 2020 got Meseck's feet wet in the Division II space and set the scene for his coaching resume in this space to begin.

If you went back in time five years and caught Meseck before his Northern Cass Jaguars hit the court to tell him he'd go on to be the head coach of an NCAA program in half a decade's time, it's hard to know whether or not he'd believe you. Regardless, that's exactly what happened. 

Life has a funny way of working out sometimes. Shortly after Meseck became a Golden Eagle, the team's head coaching position was suddenly open for grabs following the departure of fifth-year head coach Sarah Rauen. Meseck was given the interim tag heading into Crookston's 2022 campaign, and on October 7, that tag was dropped- the program was sold on Meseck and decided to make his position a little more permanent.

Meseck being given such a vote of confidence behind the wheel of the kind of rebuild the Golden Eagles are undergoing is no small gesture.

Crookston currently sits at a record of 3-18. This triples the wins the Golden Eagles earned last season during Meseck's brief stint as assistant coach. Crookston hasn't reached four wins since they did so in back-to-back seasons in 2019 and 2018. They haven't hit seven since 2017. One season prior in 2016, Crookston last hit double-digit wins with a 10-18 effort. Three years prior to that in 2013, Crookston last enjoyed a winning record at 15-14. This was the only time the Golden Eagles have operated above-500 in the new millennium. 

With only seven matches remaining on the year for Crookston, rewriting the history books in some of these arenas is either improbable or downright impossible. However, meaningful progress can still be made towards the top of the list.

The Golden Eagles leading this effort towards change have varying levels of experience within the course that they're hoping to correct. For someone like freshman Audrey Cariveau, there's no previous line of work to reference- what she's doing this season, what her team is doing this season, will set the standard. So far, she's off to a pretty strong inaugural campaign, one that's translating into improved fortunes for her club. Cariveau leads the team in kills with 202 (2.66).

Often setting the ball for Cariveau is a player on the exact opposite side of the spectrum, an arrangement that's almost a little too on-the-nose in its setup of a line about passing on knowledge: redshirt-senior Natalie Koke. Koke has spent her entire collegiate career at Crookston. Along the way, she's amassed 1284 total assists, enough to land her in seventh all-time in that stat in Crookston history. It's likely that Koke would trade an individual accolade like this in in a heartbeat if it could have translated into more success for her teams over the years. While this can't be done, what Koke can do in the twilight of her career as a Golden Eagle is continue to be a core pillar of culture and experience within the program, providing insight in these arenas that can help strengthen the team's foundations moving forward. 

Crookston's defense presents a similar situation. Leading the way in digs is a sophomore in Layne Whaley, who has 258 (3.44 D/S) thus far. A junior in Mara Weisensel leads the team in total blocks with 31 (0.41 B/S). but another redshirt-senior in Maria Jose Bustos Garcia has the team-high in blocks per set with 0.68 (28 total assists). 

These Golden Eagles sit at drastically different spots in their Crookston tenures, but they share a common goal that's the same for every player from the moment they enter the locker room for the first time from the moment they last leave it: to win. Record aside, remaining games aside, history aside, that's all that will be on this team's mind for the rest of this season.

SCOUTING REPORT ON BEMIDJI STATE: 
In Bemidji State, we move from a program right in the middle of a fresh start to one that's maintaining trust in an ongoing process.

Head coach Kevin Ulmer is in his seventh season with the Beavers. It may be easy to look at the team's 3-18 record so far this year and assume the worst, but keep this in mind. There have been four seven-plus win seasons for Beaver volleyball since 2010, and Ulmer lays claim to half of these. It's still entirely possible that Ulmer can hit that mark again- or perhaps even eclipse it- this season. Regardless, he's already rebounded from a 2-26 campaign in 2021.

Ulmer may not be winning 20+ matches yet at this point in his tenure with the Beavers, but Rome wasn't built in a day. And good things have a better chance of being built to begin with if you're able to entrust a stable employment of personnel to see the project through. That's one thing that Ulmer has provided more so than many other Bemidji head coaches in recent memory: stability. Ulmer is the longest-tenured Beaver head coach since Donna Palivec, who led the team from 1994 to 2001. Since then, including Ulmer, the Beavers have been fronted by five different coaches (six if you count a brief 2-8 stint by Jerry Hulla in 2015). Ulmer is hoping to be the reason no retrospective like this is necessary again in the near future. So far, it looks as if he's being given the time (and trust) to do just that.

One thing that bodes well for Ulmer's continued efforts is that none of his current statistical leaders should be going anywhere after this season.

Hallie Mertz leads the team with 197 kills (2.66 K/S), and she's only a junior. Better still, the team's leading assist-getter in Hally Holker, who has 308 (4.16 A/S), is just a freshman. In second place in the assist race within the Beavers' two-setter system is sophomore Emily Wade, who has 290 (3.92 A/S). The Beaver defense is headlined by two juniors, first dig-leader Lauren Justesen with 154 (3.95 D/S) and then leading-blocker Rylie Bjerklie with 41 (0.62 A/S). 

Ulmer and company won't be able to hit the 12-win mark set in coach Wayne Chadwick's inaugural 2010 season that currently sits as the pinnacle of recent success for this program. Barring a huge hot streak, this won't be his first season of double-digit wins, either. Still, time remains for this to be yet another step up the ladder- and all steps are meaningful ones. 

BITS FROM BOOS: 
As they stand today, Crookston and Bemidji State are teams that are often disadvantaged in the realms of black-and-white, on-paper reality. This may be where stat sheets reside, but it's not where matches of volleyball are played. As a coach, Boos understands this.

For example, while it might be tempting to gauge everything there is to know about Crookston based on their 3-18 record, Boos knows that this isn't the way to go. His analysis pins the Golden Eagles as a group that is in fact improving under new direction and playing with heart, something that should always be feared in any team.

"From a coaching perspective, it's a team that I think, watching them play this last weekend against Winona and Upper Iowa, is playing hard," Boos said. "I think offensively, they're doing some good things and having more success than maybe some of the previous versions that team has had recently."

Then there's Bemidji, another 3-18 opponent. One of Boos' concerns with the Beavers is more out of left field, perhaps something only a coach would think of. Remember that matches aren't played on paper- they're played in arenas. No two arenas are built alike. 

"Anytime you go on the road, it's a challenge- doesn't matter what the record of the opponent is," Boos said. "Bemidji is a tough gym to play in- it's small, it's loud, its ceiling is low...it adds an element of uncertainty because a ball that's dug a little bit higher could end up in the rafters bouncing around whereas in a lot of facilities that doesn't happen, or if it does it just comes back clean...  that's something we're not used to dealing with as much, so that's always a challenge."

Prepare as you might for an upstart offense or a low-rise gym, but none of it will mean much if your team isn't well aligned in their approach from an internal standpoint. 

Boos made it a point to stress that honing the team's self identity will be a major point of emphasis above all else this week. After-all, a team without a clear understanding of itself can never hope to properly understand an opponent. One key issue to focus on in this effort? Stability. 

"I feel like we're coming off a weekend where we played really well on Saturday and didn't get the result we wanted and didn't play as well on Friday and did get the result we wanted," Boos said. "We're just looking to figure out the consistency on our side of the net- making sure we're taking care of the ball, making sure we're serving tough, making sure we're defending well. Those are the things that stem as most important as we look ahead to these upcoming sets of matches- can we start figuring out and finalizing who we are as we head towards the end of the season here."

Maybe Friday's match in Mankato wasn't a work of art for the Bulldogs, but it proved that they could hang tough through that kind of performance and prevail all the same. And perhaps a night like Saturday generated some questions for this UMD group, but there's no doubt that it also provided some answers. If there had been any doubt that the Bulldogs couldn't handle top-five competition after their loss to #1 Wayne State earlier in the year, it should be totally erased now. This team battled tooth-and-nail with a strong Concordia squad that's #3 in the country for a reason. While there will be much to work on and discuss when it comes to what those final steps are in being able to finish the job against a squad like the Golden Bears, the Bulldogs sure proved to themselves this weekend that the pieces that they need to solve that equation seem to exist in-house- it's just a matter of fine-tuning them. Perhaps that starts with some stress-testing against sharp changes in the tide of a match. 

"We're excited to know we're right on the verge of being able to compete with the top echelon of our league, which is nice after last year's season where we weren't able to do that necessarily night-in-night-out," Boos said. "Obviously, we're trying to position ourselves for an opportunity at postseason play, whether it be conference, regional, or both... I felt like we probably played better on Saturday. We just obviously had a collapse there later in the fourth and into the fifth set that we couldn't overcome- we couldn't stop that momentum from just completely being carried to the other side...Up until that point, though, I felt really good about where we were and how we were playing. I think if that's the level we can play at throughout the remainder of the year, we'll be in a good position to be competitive in every match we play."

THE SERIES:
After a brief hiccup in the form of a pesky Concordia squad, the Bulldogs are back on track when it comes to all-time record dominance. UMD hasn't dropped a single match to Crookston across the history of the programs, the Bulldogs holding a perfect 29-0 record in the dual. The last match between the two programs was a 3-0 victory for Duluth in 2021. Against Bemidji, UMD holds a resounding 96-3 record. Their last match was no outlier, the Bulldogs winning over the Beavers 3-0 in 2021. 

THE BROADCAST:
Can't make it to Romano on Thursday? Follow the action against Crookston here:
vs Minnesota Crookston (Thursday, October 20 @ 6:00 p.m.):  bit.ly/3ESmka3

To watch the Bulldogs on the road against Bemidji, follow this link: 
vs Bemidji State (Saturday, October 22 @ 4:00 p.m.): bit.ly/3eFtd3B

LAST TIME OUT:
The Bulldogs battled through two tough road matchups this past weekend, first securing a grueling victory over a strong Minnesota State effort on Friday before dropping a five-set heartbreaker against #3 Concordia on Saturday. 

UP NEXT:
There will be little rest ahead for the Bulldogs after this weekend as the week ahead presents them with a three-match undertaking. First, a rematch against #7 St. Cloud State on Tuesday, October 25 at 6:00 p.m. This time around, UMD will play host. The Bulldogs won't be home for long, though. The weekend will send them out to South Dakota for a contest against Northern State on Friday, October 28 (6:00 p.m.) before bringing them back to Minnesota to face MSU Moorhead in Moorhead on Saturday, October 29 (2:00 p.m.).