The UMD volleyball team defeated Washburn 3-1 on Friday to advance to the second round of the NCAA Tournament. 

Early in the match, it was the Ichabods that had established control. The two teams traded points until Washburn went on a 3-0 lead to turn a 5-4 advantage into a score of 8-4, forcing UMD's first timeout of the contest. The Bulldogs kept battling, but they were unable to totally knot up the score. Two Ichabod points off of a Jalyn Stevenson/Kassidy Pfeiffer block and a Sydney Pullen service ace gave the Ichabods their biggest set lead up to that point at a score of 14-9. Washburn would maintain this pace until the score was 16-11. There, the Bulldogs went on a run. 

A 6-0 run, to be exact. Four of these points came off of UMD kills (with Sydney Lanoue staking claim to two of those), and a Hope Schjenken block made it so that just one of the points in this stretch wasn't caused directly by the Bulldogs' hands. Unfortunately for UMD, the Ichabods would answer with a 5-1 run of their own to regain control at 21-18 and force the Bulldogs to use their final timeout. UMD would get tantalizingly close to drawing even once again at a score of 22-21 Washburn, but the Ichabods would close the frame on a 3-0 run to take it 25-21 and claim a 1-0 lead in the match.

Neither team branched off any kind of stern lead for the majority of the second frame- each just kept trading blows. It was a set that would see 12 total ties. The Bulldogs secured their largest lead of the match at 5-3 before Washburn went on a 9-4 run to take a three-point advantage of their own at 12-9. The Bulldogs kept fighting, though, not only evening the score back up but reclaiming the lead at 15-14 off of two-straight Cianna Selbitschka kills. Here, the Ichabods would again hit a stride where they were just a step ahead, going on a 5-2 run to reclaim the lead at 19-17 and induce a UMD timeout. There were some growing pains out of the break, the Bulldogs still finding themselves down three at 21-18, but soon, it was all UMD.  Three Bulldog points made it 21-21 – timeout Washburn. Out of that break, UMD rattled off four more in a row. All four of these points came off of Washburn errors. Suddenly, UMD had won the second frame and tied the match up at one win apiece. 

This is the kind of stretch that can generate a lot of momentum for the team on the right side of it. It sure seemed like it did the trick for the Bulldogs.

After some early-set jostling that had become the standard of the match, UMD blew the doors off of the third frame. What was once a 4-3 lead soon shot all the way up to an 11-3 grip on the set. By the end of this run, Washburn had already burned both of its timeouts. For as easy as it would have been for this to have stunned the Ichabods, they instead started the steady climb back into contention. Their efforts had soon trimmed the Bulldog lead down to just five at a score of 13-8 and gotten a timeout from UMD. Not long after that, it was 14-11, 15-12 UMD. Only a big trio of Bulldog kills, two from Lanoue and one from Samantha Paulsen, soothed the surging Ichabods. By then, the score was 18-12, the Bulldogs again in decent control. From that point onward in the set, the closest Washburn would get to evening things up would be within four points. Meanwhile, the Bulldogs ballooned their lead back up to eight at 24-16, within a point of taking an ever-important lead in the match at-large. The Ichabods would make things interesting, going on a 3-0 run to make the score 24-19, but a Selbitschka attack killed all tension. UMD took a set they'd let the whole way 25-19 and secured that 2-1 match advantage. 

In the fourth frame, UMD skipped the pleasantries of a punch-counterpunch cadence and landed a big jab right out of the gate. At a score of 2-2, UMD registered three-straight kills (including two in a row from Samantha Paulsen) to make it 5-2. The Ichabods would hang around, but they'd struggle to get closer than two points from tying things up. For the most part, at least- an Austin Broadie kill had them on the brink of knotting up the score at 9-8. Not so fast- the Bulldogs returned with a 4-0 run to take a set-high five-point lead. Washburn used a timeout to try to cool down this effort, but this only proved to split the run down the middle into two separate spurts of two points. From there, the Bulldogs were in the driver's seat the rest of the way. Washburn would only get within four points of a tie, last at a score of 17-13. UMD just kept pushing its foot on the gas. The Bulldogs eventually had an eight-point, 21-13 lead to show for it. Still, the Ichapods didn't fold. They would maintain intrigue with three straight points to make it 23-18, or at least enough intrigue to get a timeout from UMD. From there, the teams went back to their old ways, bouncing points off of one another. It's a different story doing this so late in a frame compared to the early stages, a new tale that spelled a happy ending for the Bulldogs. UMD would close the final 25-19 and take the match 3-1. 

What a star-studded day it was for Lanoue. The fifth-year senior closed the match with a career-high 22 kills. It's not just that Lanoue found herself on the score sheet so many times- it's that she was so efficient along the way, too. The outside hitter compiled those kills on a hitting percentage of .529 that would've been impressive with half the amount of tallies. Lanoue was far from the only Bulldog with a knack for precision in this matchup- three of her teammates also closed the day with efficiency clips above .300. Paulsen got her 15 Ks with a percentage of .444 while Hope Schjenken and Grace Daak had nine kills apiece at clips of .429 and .368, respectively. There's no doubt this made Madison Gordon pretty happy- she had 55 assists in the match. Defensively, Lanoue led the way with 16 digs while Schjenken paired three block assists with a solo block to lead the team. 

Washburn was led by Stevenson's 15 kills. Two Ichapods split the wealth when it came to assists, Corinna McMullen ending with 18 and Sydney Conner closing with 17. Pullen had a team-high 14 digs. Kealy Kiviniemi had five block assists, and Kassidy Pfeiffer had four block assists with to go with a solo effort. 

BITS FROM THE BULLDOGS: 
After the match, UMD head coach Jim Boos led with kudos for an Ichabods squad that had made his Bulldogs work for every bit of the victory on Friday. Hard work, to be sure, but work UMD got done.

"First, I want to congratulate Washburn on an incredible season," Boos said. "Obviously, they made an incredible run last weekend winning the MIAA Tournament, having to beat three teams that were in the regional rankings in order to do it, secured their spot into the tournament and certainly were a scary opponent to have to face coming into the regional first round. Obviously, that showed itself in the first set. You could tell we were a little tight. We made a lot of mistakes early on, and (I'm) just really happy with how we bounced back. Gritted our way through a second set and then finally started to do some of the things we wanted them to do and controlled some things that we wanted to control."

If one of the items on the to-do list was "have a huge third set," then the Bulldogs might be fine to check that box twice.

At the core of that run in the third frame was the continued build of a strong offensive outing from the Bulldogs all around. In particular, Boos highlighted his team's ability to not only put pressure onto Washburn, but to do it efficiently.

"I think for the first time, we were able to make them a little uncomfortable on serve-receive," Boos said. "We were getting some out-of-system swings, making some digs and converting them into swings the other direction. Fortunately, we had (Lanoue) here on the outside for a lot of them, and she was super aggressive with her swinging and found ways to score a ton. I think that separation there really built a belief in this group that they could get this done and that they were capable of more than what they had done the first two sets, and obviously, finishing hitting above .300 kind of shows how well they finished."

It's always a mark of good fortune to have Lanoue on the squad, and her effort on Friday certainly encapsulates why.

Actually, it's not just the fact that Lanoue is capable of these kinds of numbers that makes her such a good team member- it's the team-centric attitude she's able to have with regards to those numbers, too.

"All credit to my teammates," Lanoue said. "That's as intense on defense as I've seen us. We were picking up balls, Madison (Gordon) was doing a great job creating one-on-one looks for me. Just felt like I was seeing the court really well. Credit to my teammates, too, calling out shots. I just felt like that was a great team effort."

It wasn't just Lanoue that Gordon was dishing the ball out to tonight- she was as unselfish with the ball as she was with her post-game comments on her big performance.

"Our serve-receive got much better in the third and fourth game, and I think that was a big turnaround for our team," Gordon said. "It allowed me to be more in-system and then set everyone on the court, so it wasn't just one person on the outside- it was getting everyone out there. "