St. Paul, Minn.- Though they found a way to make things interesting in each set, the #4 UMD volleyball team lost a hard-fought 3-0 match to Concordia on Saturday afternoon, ending their run at an NSIC Tournament title. The Bulldogs will enter Selection Sunday for the NCAA Tournament on November 13 (10:30 p.m.) with a 26-4 overall record and a 17-3 conference result through a tough slate of NSIC opponents, the Golden Bears included. 

The Bulldogs were no strangers to the challenge of playing in St. Paul, having already visited for a tooth-and-nail, five-set affair with Concordia earlier in the season. The first set of Saturday's match served as a refresher. 

The Golden Bears jumped out on an 8-3 run to start the first frame. Those eight points came in a wide variety of flavors, including two kills and two service aces. The Bulldogs' fortunes didn't improve right away out of the ensuing UMD timeout. The score was soon 16-8, and the Bulldogs found themselves calling another one. Concordia's lead would peak at nine shortly thereafter. At 20-11, the Bulldogs started to mount some sustained pushback. They'd capitalize on two Concordia errors by interspersing them with two kills to trim the deficit down to six at a score of 21-15. The two teams would then trade points for some time, an exchange that favors the team with the advantage- Concordia was left with a 24-17 lead, on the brink of taking the first set. If this is some magic threshold that's supposed to spell surrender for the opposing side, the Bulldogs sure didn't get the memo. Samantha Paulsen snagged a kill to make it 24-18. A Jasmine Mulvihill attacking error brought the Bulldogs on the brink of crossing into the 20s, something an ensuing block by Sydney Lanoue would see through to completion. Speaking of Lanoue, she jumped right back onto the score sheet with a kill to leave UMD within just three points of forcing extra rallies. Alas, the Bulldogs' comeback bid would come up short following a Kennedy Brady kill to seal the first set 25-21 and spell a 1-0 match lead for the Golden Bears.

Would have been hard to ask for much more out of Lanoue or Cianna Selbitschka in that first frame, Lanoue had a team-high six kills on a .556 hitting percentage, while Selbitschka had five kills hitting at a .833 clip. Early deficits are early deficits all the same. 

The Bulldogs' efforts at the end of the first frame weren't all for nothing; momentum from that run seemed to carry over into the second frame. There was no early five-point advantage to be found for the Golden Bears this time around- the Bulldogs were in total lockstep with them. By the time the score was 8-8, Concordia had only been able to muster a few two-point advantages. Forget playing from ahead, though- after UMD broke the tie on a Selbitschka kill to take it 9-8, it'd be some time before the Golden Bears were doing anything but coming back from behind. UMD soon found itself with a 17-12 lead in the later portions of the set on the back of a 9-3 run. Selbitschka had capped off this stretch with two straight kills to complete the hat trick. Unfortunately, all it takes is an inch of a stumble for them to have enough space to operate, A UMD service error provided them with such room. Soon enough, the Golden Bears were on a 5-1 run, leaving them with just a single-point deficit at 18-17 UMD. A Bulldog timeout would help the team to preserve its lead for a little while longer, but the set was soon knotted at 23-23. A block by Katie Mattson and Mulvihill would put Concordia on the cusp of a 2-0 lead in the match at a score of 24-23, something a Bulldog timeout wasn't able to postpone forever. Mulvihill would come out of the break with a kill to create a two-game hole for UMD.

This time, it was Concordia's turn to ride a wave. They'd start the third frame on a 5-1 run, shades of their performance in set one. The following UMD effort to tie things up at five shattered that comparison until an 8-3 Golden Bears run breathed it new life and let the score at 13-7 Concordia. Just as the Bulldogs got within three at a score of 13-10, Concordia pushed their lead back up to six at 16-10. The Bulldogs decided the push the envelope even further in this next comeback effort by going on a 5-0 run to bring themselves within one at 16-15. This was met with three-consecutive Concordia points to push the lead back up to four at 19-15. Timeout UMD. 

The Bulldogs got stuck in the dreaded cycle of late-set point-swaps once again until the score was 22-18. UMD had faced worse odds before in this match and hadn't been deterred- this didn't change here. What did chance was the result- this time around, the Bulldogs were able to climb all the way back to tie the set at 22-all. Three-straight UMD kills, the first two coming from Lanoue alone, were capped off with a combo block from Hope Schkenken and (no surprise) Lanoue had been enough to get the job done- and to burn both of Concordia's timeouts. 

No timeouts, no problem- The Golden bears would exit their last break with a 2-0 spurt to leave themselves within a point of winning the whole match. Another kill by Lanoue would provide tension, but a UMD service error would sink it. 25-23 (3-0) Concordia.

Lanoue and Selbitschka, the two offensive dynamos of the first frame, stood tall as the co-leaders in total kills by the end of the night with 13. Madison Gordon gad a team-high 31 assists. Grace Daak had three block assists to lead the team. There was a three-way tie for the Bulldog-best in digs, Kaylyn Madison joining Lanoue and Selbitschka with nine. 

The Golden Bears were led by Mulvihill's 10 kills and Teagan Starkey's 36 assists. Katie Mattson had four block assists to go with a solo block to lead her team in that arena. Emma Schmidt had a team-high 13 digs.

BITS FROM BOOS:
There's such thing as a 3-0 win that can give the victor pause.

UMD had a few such matches under its belt this season heading into Saturday, contests like the one on the road against Sioux Falls in October or the battle against Northern in the Bulldogs' home-opening weekend. The key is that in each of these affairs, the Bulldogs were the ones contemplating while being a win richer. 

Yesterday was the first time this UMD squad had to jostle with what it means to be on the other side of that equation.

A result like this isn't very cut-and-dry. It's a different breed from a more prototypical 3-0 loss over which a blanket "we got outplayed" can be applied. There's more minutiae involved. It becomes a game of centimeters rather than inches. UMD head coach Jim Boos understood this and dissected the match as such.

"Obviously, the other couple 3-0 losses we had, both to Wayne and to Northern, (we) just didn't play well enough for too large a portion of those two matches to make it as competitive as we needed to make it," Boos said. "Tonight, I think we competed hard. We played really well at times, we just had a few points in time where we were unable to sideout, or we didn't make enough plays. Early in the fist set, we just couldn't get ourselves going. We built up too big of a deficit to be able to come back. The second set, we built up a lead but then ran into a little bit of a sticking point where we just couldn't get out of a rotation, couldn't seem to score. That turned into too tight of a game, and they made a couple of plays that they needed to make to finish. Third set was close. We were trailing, but it felt like it was within reach. Then (we) made a nice, aggressive run where we did some good things and put ourselves in a position to have a chance."

Obviously, that run wouldn't be enough to shift things in UMD's favor. It's a shame, too, because in a match like this, it feels like just one more gust of wind might have been the difference. 

But you can't try to get by relying on the strange forces of the volleyball cosmos to swing things in your favor at the right time. What you can do is strive to get better to put yourself in a stronger position for good things to happen to you. Even the most marginal of improvements can go a long way, something a match like Saturday's demonstrates to a T. 

Boos knows the kinds of things that make this UMD team click- he saw flashes of these systems at play in the rematch with the Golden Bears. He also knows the kinds of repercussions the Bulldogs' play style can bring with it if not employed with care. The key is simple: accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative. Simply said, at least. Still, the kinds of teams the Bulldogs would be playing moving into the rest of November wouldn't be the kind to give much grace when it comes to figuring it out. 

"I think we've identified that the formula for us- and it's a challenging one- is finding a way to stay aggressive and be the offense that we want to be," Boos said.  "Tonight, we had more kills in the match than Concordia had. Our side out percentages set one and set two were really good. But, we also errored significantly more, and therein lies the challenge for us: can we find a way to continue to be terminal, to be aggressive, but to limit some of the mistakes that we're making. Some of them certainly are opponent-induced, and you've got to give your opponent credit when they formulate a good block, or they serve tough and get you uncomfortable. There's sometimes when we execute and then maybe we just don't quite finish off the play the way we need to and we make a mistake with a shot selection or a set selection or whatever it might be. I think if we can, over the next for-five days here, get some of that ironed out where we can execute at a high level and get back to hitting at the .260/.290 range instead of at the .230/.200 range, that's the difference between having a chance to win a match like we played tonight and not winning a match like we played tonight. We know a team like a Concordia or like a Wayne just aren't going to make a lot of mistakes for you- they aren't going to give away a ton of points, so you've got to figure out a way to make sure you're matching that and not make quite as many mistakes as we made tonight." 

This might sound like a daunting task, but it's really a matter of perspective. Look at it like this: the Bulldogs are are already 26-4. They're already the fourth most-touted team in the entire country. Still, they have another gear that they can hit, or at least lock themselves into more firmly. Not every team can say that, and not every team is already operating at UMD's level. This is what's on Boos' mind heading into a potential tournament bid. 

"I think the biggest thing here is we have to take away some of the positives of the night," Boos said. "Although we didn't play our best, we were still in the match, and we know we can play better than we played tonight- and we know we're going to have to play better than we played tonight, given the quality of the teams that are going to be at a regional."