Aberdeen, SD: The first time the UMD volleyball team faced off against Northern State, the Wolves showed that they were more than capable of competing with the Bulldogs, rankings and records aside. On Friday. Northern proved that point beyond a shadow of a doubt. The #4 Bulldogs fell in straight sets to the Wolves in Aberdeen. This is just the third loss of the season for UMD, leaving the team's record at 22-3. Northern improves to 16-9.

Back in the September 17 matchup between these two squads, it was the Bulldogs that came out of the gate hot with a 6-1 start in front of their home crowd in Romano. Friday, the roles were totally flipped. Eerily, with their own home fans cheering them on, the Wolves continued the cycle, avenging their earlier effort with a 6-1 run of their own. Already, UMD was forced to burn a timeout. For the rest of the set, the Bulldogs were forced to play catch-up. They'd edge tantalizingly close to drawing even with the Wolves time and time again, cutting their deficit down to three at scores of 6-3, 7-4 and 9-6. Alas, the Wolves had no intentions of relinquishing their advantage- a 3-0 run to pump the lead up to a new high of six points at a score of 12-6 proved this quite well. The Bulldogs were able to better match Northern's pace after this, only getting outscored 6-5 for a stretch, but by this point, this wasn't enough. The score was 18-11, and UMD would need a huge effort to come all the way back. Credit to the Bulldogs- they never stopped fighting. At one point, UMD had the lead all the way back down to three at a score of just 20-17 Northern, prompting a timeout out of the Wolves. Unfortunately, out of the break, the teams found themselves in lockstep once again- which is all Northern State needed. The Wolves closed out the set on a tight 5-4 run to clinch a monumental 1-0 lead in the match. Try as they might, the Bulldogs couldn't dig themselves out of the big hole they found themselves in just a little too early, 

It was a crater that was formed by a few different forces. On one hand, Northern State produced a trio of impressive offensive performances in set one. Leading the way was Taylor Buckley, who had four kills on a .429 hitting percentage. Right behind her were Sally Gaul and Hanna Thompson, each with three kills. Both recorded these tallies on .300+ hitting percentages of their own, Gaul just breaking the mold with a .300 clip and Thompson leading the team with a percentage of .600. This is hard enough to overcome in isolation, but it becomes more difficult to weather when you're also working against yourself. UMD finished the set with seven attacking errors to just three for the Wolves. close that differential, and this is an entirely different ballgame. In spite of all of this, all was not lost for the Bulldogs. Paulsen led them in kills with for of her own, and behind her sat a counter trio of attackers with three kills: Sydney Lanoue, Hope Schjenken and Cianna Selbitschka. Lanoue and Schjenken each recorded those kills on a hitting percentage of .750. It seemed like if the Bulldogs could maintain course, clean up some mistakes and simply get just a little luckier. they would be fine moving forward. 

UMD taking its first lead of the entire match at 2-1 early in the second frame appeared to be a massive point of evidence for this theory. Soon, it was 6-4 Bulldogs, and they still hadn't trailed in set two. The Bulldogs seemed to have a great hand- soon enough, they were playing 52-card pickup all over again. Out of the blue, the Wolves rallied off a 4-0 run to make the score 8-6 and regather the lead they'd held for oh-so long. Disheartening as it may have been, UMD was able to survive this rush. The Bulldogs would scratch and claw with the Wolves to keep themselves within striking distance. The fruits of their labor left them right on the doorstep of evening things back up at a score of 13-12. "Nope," said the Wolves, who met this moment with yet another 4-0 run to take a five-point hold on the set at a score of 17-12. In hindsight, this was the swing that really took UMD out of this set. The Bulldogs kept things interesting down the stretch, holding the deficit down to just four for much of the later portions of the match, but they could never reach any closer than that. Or maybe it was a different four-point swing- the third of the set for the Wolves, for those keeping track. 19-15 Northern soon turned to 23-15 on the back of two Wolves kills and two UMD attack errors. If there had been any doubt before, it was gone after that. The Wolves would take the set 25-17 and take a commanding, unforeseen 2-0 lead over the match. 

What's bad is that the Wolves' offense hadn't cooled down much after the first set. In the second frame, both Gaul and Thompson outdid themselves to tie for the team-lead in kills with four. Gaul was perfectly consistent, getting her kills on a .300 hitting percentage once again. Thompson hadn't been satisfied with her earlier .600 effort- she got an additional kill while hitting at an even higher clip of .800. What's worse is that the Bulldogs' internal woes hadn't been corrected- if anything, they'd gotten worse. UMD had nine attack errors in the second set compared to just two from the Wolves. Can't quite pull back to even by cleaning up that discrepancy, but it sure wouldn't have hurt. All things considered, the Bulldogs had a team hitting percentage of exactly .000 for the set. 

History has a cruel, cruel way of repeating itself. The worst part is that even if you can hear it loud and clear the first time, maybe even a second time, it will still repeat itself once more- just in case. If there had been any misunderstanding at all between UMD and history going into the third frame, it took seven rallies for it to be totally erased.

Once again, the Wolves took a 6-1 foothold over the set. Make it 8-2. In this stretch, Buckley alone had four kills. Everything was humming for Northern State. The Bulldogs' best efforts brought them to within four at a score of 8-4, but after that, it was lights out. It would soon be 12-6 - again. Not long after, it was 14-7 - timeout UMD. Out of the break, the Bulldogs got stuck in a familiar purgatory. They were neck-and-neck with the Wolves, but it just didn't matter- the early lead was too much. Northern State closed the match on an 11-10 run from the 14-7 mark to take yet another set at 25-17 and take firm custody of the match, 3-0. 

Paulsen and Schjenken each had three kills in the closing set and did so on hitting percentages of.429 and .600, respectively. Even still, as a team, UMD hit at a rate of just .098 in the third frame. Meanwhile, Northern's Buckley had seven kills, Gaul adding an additional five. Each did so on hitting percentages of .400 or above in their own right, Buckley working at .538 and Gaul (who had an affinity for exact figures Friday) at .400. Besides the sheer amount of kills, the biggest difference here is that these performances were supplemented by an overall team efficiency of .400 in set three. That's... pretty high. For context, the current national leader in average team hitting percentage sits at a standard clip of .305. 

Take all three sets into account, and the Wolves' efficiency figure doesn't take much of a hit. They worked at a hitting percentage of .393 on the night. The Bulldogs? just .125. Northern's Buckley  (12), Gaul (12) and Thompson (10) all recorded double-digit kills and did so on hitting percentages above .333. Thompson in particular worked at an eye-popping .562 clip across three sets. UMD produced just one double digit attacker in Paulsen, who had 10. In terms of Assists, Northern's Keri Walker had 35 while UMD's Madison Gordon had 28.

On defense, the hits don't really stop coming. The Wolves had 10 total blocks compared to just four for the Bulldogs. Cara Cyr alone had five block assists for Northern on the night, whereas UMD's blocks leader in Hope Schjenken had one block assist and a solo block. Even when it came to digs, an area where the Bulldogs had the Wolves beat, it wasn't by much- at all. UMD had 34 digs on the night compared to 33 for Northern. Even still, the Wolves produced the highest individual dig-getter of the evening in Gaul, who had 10. Kaylyn Madison and Lanoue led the Bulldogs with seven each. 

On this night, Northern was simply the better team. That hasn't happened much to the #4 Bulldogs this year, but it's something that happens regardless. 

BITS FROM BOOS:
If it was ever going to happen to UMD on this scale, it makes sense that it occurred on a day where its offense just couldn't seem to get going. The Bulldogs have operated within a well-distributed, well-oiled machine of an offensive scheme all season. Within a system like that, perhaps you can get by if there's one defect in the line. For multiple pieces to fall out of working order at the same time is something that's much harder to recover from, and that's the reality the Bulldogs found themselves in on Friday. 

In a red-alert situation like that, what can you do? To UMD head coach Jim Boos, all you can really do is trudge onwards and hope that the bugs work themselves out. Outside of that,  you have to respect the effort of the team that's placing you under such duress. 

"The mindset is to continue to do what we've been trying to do all year long and stay aggressive and control the tempo and what we're doing and hope that at some point in time, it clicks," Boos said. "Obviously, you can't just in the mid stream of a match flip and change what your mentality or your offensive system is, so that's the challenge we ran into tonight. Northern did a really good job of pressuring us with tough serving and presented a big block at the net that slowed some things down, and they made plays in the back court that made it very challenging for us to score points. Those nights where your offense just isn't clicking, you just tip your hat to your opponent and hope that you can move on and be better tomorrow."

It's fair to say that after a night like the one the Wolves had, they deserve an even more pronounced hat-tip than that. 

Boos obliged. He didn't have a shortage of things to discuss when it came to aspects of the match that went well for Northern. 

"In general, they just played with such confidence and aggression that whether they were in system or out of system, it didn't seem to matter a whole lot- their mentality didn't change," Boos said. "They took really aggressive, heavy swings. They attacked high off of our block. They swung heavy around the block, and we just couldn't do anything to slow any of the three of them (Buckley, Gaul and Thompson) down. Even when we made them a little uncomfortable with some good serving, they would hit a high, out of system ball to one of their pin attackers who would take a really good, aggressive swing and find a way to score. Defensively, we just weren't able to slow them down enough at the net, and we didn't dig enough balls in the back court. Add to that the fact that they did do a better job of those two things and slowed us down offensively, and that's going to put you in a position where you're not going to be able to do very well in the match. That's what we ran into tonight."

All things considered, it feels like on the same night everything went right for the Wolves, everything went wrong for the Bulldogs. That's not much of a winning recipe for UMD. There's only so much the Bulldogs can control about the former step in the process, but there's much that was left on the table in terms of their ability to correct the latter. 

Boos didn't mince any words about this... but he left the door open for hope. 

"I told the girls that there haven't been many matches this year where we've had a conversation afterwards with just not being happy with the way we performed across the board," Boos said. "We just didn't do anything particularly well and to the level that we expect of ourselves. As a coaching staff, we were unable to help them and find a way to get them out and make a change that made a difference. Top-to-bottom, we just didn't have a good night, and the good news is we get a chance to go at it again tomorrow and rectify that by just having a better match."

A unique problem pushing on the other side of that door for the first time all season following a UMD loss is that word "tomorrow."

Each of the Bulldogs' previous two losses this season came on the second half of weekend stretches. In light of that, UMD has yet to be defeated only to have to hit the road and play another match the very next night. It's a unique challenge, but it's not one that Boos feels is immediately worse than the post-loss formula his team has grown more used to this season. Regardless, the end result needs to be the same: to move on.

"I think there's two different approaches to it," Boos said. "When you have more time, you have more time to work out the kinks and really be prepared for ironing out some of the issues that arose during a match like that. The negative is it gives you five or six days to sit and wallow on it and question what your issues are, are we going to be better, why couldn't we figure these things out when we were playing. This way, we don't have any time to worry about it, think about it, do anything about it,. We just have to come back tomorrow and erase it from our memories and get back to the things that we've been doing well all year."

Time will tell whether or not the Bulldogs will be able to have a short memory, but one thing is clear as of this moment: the sky isn't falling. The Bulldogs are 22-3. A near 6:1 ratio of good to bad days is one a lot of us would take. You never want to grow complacent of losing, but you have to recognize that you aren't always going to win.