Wayne, Neb.- While I was packing up to leave Rice Auditorium, the older woman sitting next to me in the media lounge asked, "so, are you done now?" Solemnly, I said yes. She responded, "someone has to lose."

They're tough words of wisdom, but they're words of wisdom nonetheless.

Thousands upon thousands of contests across all sports have gone the distance- and then some. Overtime after overtime, extra rally after extra rally, whatever the terminology is, it's being used to describe a matchup where neither team has much interest in walking out without a win. Really, a game doesn't even have to go long for it to be true that both teams left everything they had out on the field, the ice, the court. Numbers and blanket objectivity can only go so far.

 Perhaps the most unforgiving label of them all is "loss."

At the end of the day, it's not an all-encompassing value judgment of effort. All it is is a cruel biproduct of reality.

It's a reality the UMD volleyball team had to jostle with on Saturday. The Bulldogs lost to Concordia-St. Paul 3-1 in the second round of the NCAA Tournament, ending both their tourney run and their season.

Concordia head coach Brady Starkey has won nine NCAA Tournament Titles. On paper, this looks nice, but it is in no way an indicator of what his team will look like in the present moment- there's no immediate correlation. However, when you see the way the Golden Bears opened the match against UMD and then refer back to that track record, you're not going to be totally lost.

Concordia came out firing on all cylinders. Truth be told, they probably played about as close to a perfect set as is reasonable to expect. An 8-2 lead became 14-4, 17-6, 20-7. There just wasn't much that could be done to stop it, including two UMD timeouts at 8-2 and 13-4. As a team, the Golden Bears hit .619 for the frame. They had just one attacking error on 21 attempts. Every single Concordia player that registered at least a kill did so on a personal hitting percentage of .333 or higher, with all but one of them hitting better than .600. It's hard to imagine how UMD (or any team) could have countered this, but it doesn't help that it all aligned with a set to forget for the Bulldogs. Good teams have really good sets. Good teams can have sets that don't meet their standards. It's even possible that those two phenomena can occur at the same time within a frame. That's what happened in Concordia's 25-8 set one victory on Saturday.

Something else good teams can do? Bounce back. Even when the going is only getting tougher.

Not only did the Bulldogs find themselves in a 1-0 jam for the match, but they opened the second set down five at a score of 7-2. UMD would do well to keep that lead from growing until the score hit 12-7 and two quick kills from Jasmine Mulvihill made it 14-7. Timeout UMD. What a call that was, Out of the break, a Sydney Lanoue kill gave the Bulldogs life- and the ball. That's not a resource they would use lightly. Following another Lanoue kill to make the score 14-9, Kaylyn Madison rattled off two straight service aces bring the Bulldogs back to within three. For the first time all night, timeout Concordia. This would only delay what now seemed inevitable. The Golden Bears tightened things up on their end out of the break, but the Bulldogs just kept pushing. Soon enough, the score was all knotted up at 18 apiece. This happened by way of – you guessed it- a service ace, this one from Madison Gordon. How about another for the Bulldogs to take their first lead of the night at 19-18? You got it.

It was far from mission accomplished for the Bulldogs at that point, though- the Golden Bears weren't going anywhere. Once a dual effort block by Makenna Berger and Katie Mattson tied things back up at 19, the teams got stuck in total lockstep. What resulted was the kind of tooth-and-nail, game-of-inches finish that elicits timeouts after single kills that lead to scores of 21-20, 22-22. There is so little room for error. The Golden Bears learned this in the hardest way imaginable- two straight Concordia attacking errors put the set to bed for Duluth 25-23 and knotted the contest up at a set a pop.

What a difference a fresh set can make. Now it was the Bulldogs who could boast the set's higher hitting percentage (.379), the fact that every one of their kill-getters in the frame had a hitting percentage of .300 or above. And how about Lanoue? The fifth-year outside hitter had a team-leading five kills on a stellar .833 efficiency clip- talk about leading by example. Credit to Concordia, who still played very well. The Golden Bears hit .343 as a team for the frame. It just so happens that another good team was able to do them one better this time.

Remember, though- good teams bounce back.

Well, it would have been hard for Concordia to bounce much higher than where they already were heading into the third set. The key for them, really, was to maintain elevation in the face of some turbulence, turbulence that would carry over into that third frame.

For the first time in the match, UMD was seeing results early in the set rather than falling into an early hole. The Bulldogs even had a handful of early one-point leads until the score hit 6-6. No seismic shift happened right after this score was registered- in fact, not too long after, the score was still tight at 10-9. With hindsight, though, we know that 6-6 was the last time this frame would have an even score. Speaking of the 10-9 mark, the Golden Bears would snag four-straight points from then on to take a 14-9 lead and force a UMD timeout. If any team should know the possibility of coming back from this kind of deficit, it'd be these Bulldogs. Their bid to do so started off pretty well, with two quick kills capped off by another Kaylyn Madison service ace making the score just 14-12 Concordia.

 There's a reason it's always possibility rather than guarantee in the sports space- Concordia would proceed to go on a commanding 8-1 run to make the score 22-13.

The Bulldogs did about all they could do from that point onwards in the frame, outscoring the Golden Bears 4-3 the rest of the way. They just didn't have enough runway to work with anymore. Concordia would take the set 25-17 and a 2-1 lead over the match.

The snake that had bitten UMD before the start of the match had circled back before the third as the Bulldogs again struggled to hit with efficiency. What helped keep the Bulldogs afloat is that Concordia's own attack shown stripes of mortality throughout the third frame rather than being as surgical as it had been in the first. Needless to say, UMD was hoping to hear the thunder of the second frame again in the fourth rather than more rattling.

Instead, it would be the Golden Bears that would return to near-peak form.

Soon enough, it was 7-3 Golden Bears. Two straight errors made it 7-5 and forced a Concordia timeout, but after the break, it was all Concordia once again. 14-7 sparked a UMD timeout, but the second would never be seen. Not at 18-9, 22-11… sometimes, there's only so much that can be done. Soon enough, the Golden Bears had taken the set 25-13 and the match 3-1.

Something else a good team can do: have an off night. For it to have happened to the Bulldogs on this kind of stage is a twisted bit of luck, but it's how the cards were dealt. It doesn't define this team or its season, but there's no pretending that it didn't occur.

BITS FROM THE BULLDOGS
There's few better feelings than when everything seems to be going your way, when it's like you couldn't make a misstep even if you tried to, that the road beneath you would warp to your path. On the flipside, there are few lows like walking the straight-and-narrow just to trip on air.

Saturday night found the Bulldogs trying to dust themselves off after picking themselves up off the floor. The frustration from Boos' perspective wasn't with the fall itself- it was rooted in a true belief that his team had done everything they could have to avoid it. It never helps when you have to watch others skip past you in the process.

"First off, congratulations to Concordia," Boos said. "They came out and played incredibly well tonight. They looked like the program that they have been for 20+ years here and really came out and kind of imposed their will on us right out of the gate. Obviously, we just did not perform like we have most of the year. The biggest thing is I'm certainly not disappointed in them as players or as a team, but I'm disappointed for them, because they wanted it and they worked hard and they did all the things you need to do to prepare and be ready. We just did not perform like we wanted to and we're capable of performing tonight, and Concordia played extremely well- those two are a bad mix."

Nothing much was different about Concordia's look the last time the Bulldogs played them this year- or the time before that.

It seems like in each installment of the trilogy, something has befallen the Bulldogs, whether temporarily or for bigger stretches of time. In the case of this week, Boos had no hesitations coming out with the root of the problem.

 "Execution," Boos said. "Right out of the gate, our serve-receive was not as good as it was yesterday, and so that put us a little bit behind the eight ball in the first set, and next thing you know, they got comfortable, and they were rolling. Our serve-receive came around then after that, but they did a really good job tonight of really slowing us down at the net, getting hands on a lot of balls that allowed them to transition back. In a match where it's two teams that know each other well, it's just going to boil down to the execution of skills and what you do better. There wasn't anything Concordia did tonight that we went 'oh my god, we haven't seen that,' and there wasn't anything we did tonight that you went 'oh my god, they've never done that.' It's really about just who does what they do better, and tonight, that was certainly them."

For as much as volleyball can be a simple game of execution, life can be a simple matter of perspective.

So far, Saturday's match and its unsavory outcome has been spoken about mostly in isolation. 31 matches came before Concordia Round Three, and the Bulldogs went 27-4 in them. When UMD has been penned as a good team here and elsewhere, it sure hasn't been for nothing.

If it's not enough to hear that kind of sentiment from this recapper, try a seasoned veteran from the UMD squad herself instead.

Saturday's contest marks the last one Lanoue will play in a Bulldog uniform. If there was anyone that was going to be sick about the way things went down against Concordia to the point of disenchantment, especially at the post-match press conference mere minutes removed from the loss, it'd be her. Alas, it wasn't all doom-and-gloom from Lanoue. To her, the loss stings, and that's to be expected. However, one loss a season does not make. There's room for those two thought processes to co-exist.

"Obviously not how I wanted the year to end, but there's no shame in losing to a good team like Concordia," Lanoue said. "Just kind of the nature of how we lost is a little disappointing, but I don't want this loss to take away from anything we've done this season. It's been a really fun season, especially with…how we haven't been here for a couple years. It was good to experience this... this has been a fun year, and I wouldn't have traded it for anything."

Spoken like a true leader- because she's been one.

The experiences that you've had with a group and the things you instilled in them along the way don't have to leave with you once it's your own time to depart. That's a process that's domino effected itself down generations of Bulldog teams. Now, it's Lanoue's turn to pass the torch.

"I'm able to be the leader I was this year because of all the leaders that have gone before me and showed me what it's like to step up in big moments and be ready to play, ready to make plays and play for your teammates," Lanoue said. "Now that I'm gone, I hope that my teammates can take that same leadership and just run with it these next few years."
Boos interjected here. "That was too dark- you're not gone," Boos said. "You're just graduating."

Maybe this was said simply to lighten the mood of the moment, but Boos is still right, and he's right in more ways than one. Just as Lanoue won't be "gone" in a literal sense, her presence will still be felt on the team in a figurative one down the line.

Felt by players like Samantha Paulsen. The sophomore right-side hitter had an impressive year two as a Bulldog and an impressive tournament outing to boot. Paulsen's post-game comments made it clear how tight-knit of a group this UMD squad is and how Paulsen felt interconnected with it even in just her second year with the program.

"I think we did really well this season," Paulsen said. "Especially after last season, we really worked harder in the spring, came together this fall. Obviously, that's not the result you wanted, but... I think we all played together really well through most of the season, and even tonight, through those rough patches, we all came together and tried to play for each other, and I would not change that for anything."

We aren't left guessing whether this culture is something Lanoue and fellow upperclassmen had a hand in cultivating- Paulsen went on to answer that for herself. And with her story as a Bulldog now just halfway written, Paulsen is hoping that what she and the rest of the team have learned both through this mentorship and pure experience can propel this program to even higher highs.

"I'm really excited for what's to come next year and the year after that for me as well as the rest of the team," Paulsen said. "I think that Syd, Mads and Grace did a really great job leading us this year and kind of showing us what this program is about. After last year and just how tough of a season it was, we really pulled together again, and all the upperclassmen really helped out with that. Seeing their leadership in that way and being able to fill those footsteps as I go into my junior year next year, I'm really excited for what our team has in store..."

There's no one that relishes this togetherness more than a head coach.

For as disheartened as Boos may be about Saturday's outcome, he can play the perspective game, too. Situating the contest within a bigger picture relative to both the past and the present makes it a major building block rather than a zero-sum event with no ability to sprout off fresh potential.

"That was one of the things I tried to highlight in the locker room afterwards," Boos said. "Obviously, those are speeches as a coach you don't want to give and aren't easy to prepare for, but I told them, 'this is a great learning opportunity for the younger players in the program. Having not been here before, now you see what it's like. Now you feel what it takes, you feel the energy, you feel the atmosphere, you know where the bar is.' It doesn't take away from the fact that we had a great season and did a lot of great things- there's a lot of teams that didn't make it to the round that we made it to here in the national tournament that would have wanted to be here, teams that didn't even get into the tournament that had incredible seasons. They don't have any shame, like Syd said, in losing to a very good team who played really well tonight, but it does show them really that next level of what it takes in the Central Region to be able to continue playing, and that's the region that we're going to be in next year. So, now we know where the bar is, now they know what the goals have to be to work and advance their individual skills and their collective skills and their collective chemistry and togetherness so that when we're back next August getting ready to play the next year, we're ready to make that next step in our development."

If this year was just a steppingstone for the Bulldogs… watch out.