Within every sports fan resides two core desires: one for success, the other for spectacle. 

Success is the baseline. Without it, supporters are all but doomed to misery. Consolation prizes lose their luster after awhile- eventually, you have to be satiated by the real thing. True wins can come in all shapes and sizes, but a win is a win. The phrase "it was ugly, but we'll take it" has been uttered in tens of thousands of households all across the country and beyond. Would be nicer not to say it, but nice is still nice. 

Spectacle works a little bit differently. Nowhere in the spiritual contract between a fan and a team does it say said fan should always be captivated by their favorite franchise while they're winning- just that the winning happens. To be romantic about sports is a sweetener of sorts- wins are cups of coffee.

The matches that have taken place within Romano Gym throughout this season have been espresso shots. Not a single one has gone past three sets. Only once has something gone awry in the brewing process: a 3-0 loss to then-#1 Wayne State, a team that didn't lose its first match until this past weekend. Every other time, the process has been dependable, smooth, satisfying. A 7-1 success-to-failure ratio isn't half bad. Heading into Tuesday, much more often than not, those within Bulldog Country were having their most basic fandom desire filled in near perfect order.

Let's come clean about something: there is little spectacle to the 3-0 sweep. It's quick. It's dirty. Rarely is there sustained, back-and-forth competition. As a fan, would you ever manifest an extra set and run the increased risk of your team eventually losing because of it? Of course not. However... It's nice when the worlds of black-and-white achievement and colorful narrative can coexist.

Romano still looked like it was some kind of demilitarized zone between these two worlds early into Tuesday's match against #7 St. Cloud State. In a good way, though, for the Bulldogs at least- as has been the common trend this year. 

UMD jumped out to a 9-0 lead in this match and made it look effortless. Considering their opponent in the #7 Huskies, perhaps there was some value to be found in this beyond the realm of pure statistics, though the statistics alone are pretty nifty this case. Still, there certainly wasn't much tension to be had. Surprise? Maybe, but if you really think about it, why? UMD had sailed seven boats much like this before in the past- maybe this one benefited from friendly winds, but it still looked fated to reach the same destinations as the others. 

St. Cloud would push to within four at 13-9, but a 3-0 counter by the Bulldogs to make it 16-9 essentially wrapped things up. In due time, the Bulldogs had secured a 25-14 set victory and a 1-0 hold over the match. This is a nice story. A little familiar, but nice. 

It was only fitting that on Trick or Treat Night, a darker tale would emerge within Romano for the first time all season.

It's not fair to say that any team has given up and laid down to UMD after going down 1-0 with the Bulldogs playing host, but it's near objective to say that no squad has in fact knocked UMD down onto their own mat in this regard as hard as St. Cloud did. After an early stalemate, the Huskies amassed an 11-5 advantage that the Bulldogs simply couldn't dig out of. At 16-8, the Bulldogs were out of timeouts. All they, and their home fans, could do was wither in inevitability as St. Cloud closed the set on a 9-5 run to take it 25-13 and evened the match at one-apiece. For the first time all year, the Bulldogs were entering a third set in Romano in which they didn't have a shot to close things out. A new narrative was brewing before our eyes.

If you were wondering whether or not UMD would simply pack it in in the third set as if to make the statement that it's sweep or nothing for them in Romano... they didn't do that. In fact, the third set was the definition of a battle. This frame alone saw 13 different ties. It took until 14-12 St. Cloud for a team to snag more than a single-point advantage. When St. Cloud is burning a timeout after a 2-0 Bulldog run to make the score 18-15 UMD, you know what kind of set you find yourself in the middle of. A three point lead here felt monumental. Unfortunately, the timeout would end up being more monumental in practice. Out of the break, the Huskies were able to rally off a 4-1 run to even things back up at 19 a-pop. The Bulldogs would untie a few more knots to make it 20-19, 21-20. Alas, the Huskies just kept answering back. When the score hit 22-22, St. Cloud decided it was time to spice things up with an exclamation point- they went on a pivotal 2-point run to take a 24-22 lead. Sydney Lanoue would get a kill to make it 24-23, but unfortunately, kills don't start counting for two points late in sets. St. Cloud's Linsey Rachel would respond with a kill of her own to seal the set at 25-23 and secure a 2-1 match lead for her Huskies. 

Oftentimes, it's difficult to actively know that you're living in a moment that will prove to be a reference point. Usually, you'll need some hindsight for that, some perspective, a dash of experience. Going into set three on Tuesday, fans didn't much need any of that. They were experiencing something in person for the first time in a long time- maybe ever, for some of them- and new experiences are often bookmarked pretty quickly. 

What happens now? We could have asked that question once already, and we wouldn't have liked the answer. Maybe it's best not to ask at all- maybe we should just find out. It's often less mentally taxing that way. 

Speaking of mental liberation, an early 5-1 run for the Bulldogs in this newfangled, so-called "fourth set in Romano" worked wonders to put fans at ease. UMD was able to parlay this into as big as a 6-1 advantage, and they rode the coattails of that early lead for some time- but the Huskies kept clawing away. Five points became four...three...two...one..boom: 14-14. A lot of work to end up right back where you started. At 17-17, things were still operating at functional 0-0. The Bulldogs didn't know it at the time, but this would be the last time this set was even. An inch or two in the other direction down the stretch, and it wouldn't have been true. UMD didn't balloon out to an 8-0 run to close things out- they didn't even pull off half of that. They simply took an 18-17 lead. Then 19-17. Then 20-18, 21-19, 22-20, 23-21... until, you guessed it, 25-23. Only going into the fifth and (objectively) final set could the Bulldogs look back on the score being 17-all and call it what it was- a reference point. 

UMD certainly didn't lack points of comparison to draw back to in the arena of fifth sets heading into Tuesday. The Bulldogs' very first match of the year had gone the distance. UMD didn't even have to conjure up an image of what playing this St. Cloud Squad in a do-or-die frame would look like- earlier this season, these two squads had done just that. All-together, The Bulldogs had played in five overtime frames before their second go-around with the Huskies- they were 4-1. Maybe they hadn't won them all, but a different through-line existed, of course: all of these matches had occurred on the road. 

The initial taste of what a fifth set in Romano was like was bitter. The Huskies jumped out to a commanding 5-2 lead cherried by a service ace. When the timeout was invented, it's easy to imagine that this was the exact kind of scenario it was meant to be used in- and UMD head coach Jim Boos didn't defect from the originators. Not long after, he was probably happy not to have played contrarian- his team had gone on a 5-1 run to storm back in the set and take a 7-6 lead of their own. Timeout St. Cloud. 

Now, every point feels like an espresso shot- either that, or a bee sting. 8-7 St Cloud- ouch. 10-9 UMD, comparatively, left fans feeling ready to run up a wall. Who knows what feelings were flying around Romano when UMD had secured a 12-9 lead. 

Perhaps we can't know for sure, but those there could certainly hear it in the cheers of the crowd, see it in the jubilation of the student section filled to the brim with Bulldog athletes cheering on a fellow team. Sometimes, we don't have words for things- we just experience them. Sometimes, that's nice. Not always, but sometimes. Tuesday was one of those sometimes. 

These elusive feelings no doubt took a meteoric hit when the Huskies came storming back to make it 12-11. Stomachs from bleacher-end to bleacher-end sank when St. Cloud had tied it back up at 13 apiece. Every point is now the biggest point of the entire season, and that's not just on paper- it feels like it. When Cianna Selbitschka snags a kill to make it 14-13, it's like you're at the peak of the roller coaster, seconds away from release. A Samantha Paulsen solo block jolts the cart forward, and you're free. 

Free to do... what? Throw your arms up in the air? Scream? Shake the person next to you? Repeat a routine familiar to the basement TV setup but foreign to a public setting? Perhaps some in the audience were finding out the answer to this question for the first time themselves. Others were likely seasoned vets that knew just what they needed to do. Regardless, everyone had to do something. You can't just sit in silence in the face of spectacle.

STATS DEBRIEF:
Welcome back, Cianna! The junior outside hitter didn't play in UMD's last two matches, but with the way she performed tonight, you'd have never thought so. Selbitschka recorded a team-high 22 kills.

Madison Gordon... never change. For the first time since... Saturday, Gordon again led the Bulldogs in assists, this time with 52. 

On the defensive side of things, Grace Daak had three block assists while Paulsen had a solo block and two block assists. In terms of digs, Lanoue led the charge with 16. 

St. Cloud State was led offensively by a stout performance from Rachel. She recorded 21 kills on a .348 hitting percentage. Emma Berran had a team-high 47 assists. On defense, Phebie Rossi paired three solo blocks with four block assists to lead the team. Kenzie Foley and Emily Kern had outings of 16 digs, tying for the team-high. 

BITS FROM BOOS:
One more question: what does a coach do knee-deep in a five-set thriller? For Boos, it was a mixture of separation with a few  "wish we would haves" mixed in. Luckily for Boos, his tactic paid off, and those nagging questions probably became a little easier to silence- until practice, at least. 

"At that point in time, let your kids kind of do what they're doing, and try not to get into their ear too much in the fifth set and just keep encouraging them to fight like that and stay aggressive," Boos said. "But yeah, (we had) the thought process: why weren't we taking that cut in the third set when we had a chance to go up 2-1 and we were so much more tentative then? Just happy they came around when (they) did."

When Boos was allowing himself some words, what was he saying? 

The approach Boos wanted to see from his team in a match like this is a riff off of an old classic within the sports world, but it's a re-rendering that's done out of an understanding of what this Bulldogs team is like and how it can succeed- and fail.

"Don't be afraid to be the hero, don't be afraid to be the champion,  don't be afraid to make the mistake, but the aggressive mistake," Boos said. "The tentativeness- anytime we got tentative, they would return and put a ball away, so we're better off trying to dictate how it was going to go based on our attacking. And really, that was the message going in. I think we lost sight of that for a little bit when they started to apply pressure to us, put us in uncomfortable spots, and I think that allowed them to certainly get ahead of us in the match. Just stay aggressive- some of the swings we took at the end were what you needed to have happen in those big moments, for sure."

Yet another match played builds even more of a read on the machinations of the squad. The lessons learned are learned the hard way, perhaps the best way: through experience. Boos understands the difficulty present here, but he also seems to understand the importance of what's gained through the struggle.

"I just think it's just another good test for us to understand what we're capable of, what we can do when we're playing well and controlling the action, what happens when we give up some of that control, and then what you need to do in those grinding games when it just boils down to someone making a play in a big moment for you," Boos said. "It's a tough classroom to learn in because it's happening so fast. Usually the best time to learn is after the fact when you sit down and watch it on video like, 'oh yeah, now I see what you're talking about.' But in the moment, they're just trying to make those plays, and we made a bunch of repetitive mistakes along the line, but they also made a bunch of big plays when we needed to."