Though at times it has looked as if it was impossible, the #9 UMD volleyball team finally lost a match this season when they were defeated by #1 Wayne State in straight sets on Saturday. The Bulldogs "fall" to a 13-1 record, but while this figure is still impressive, it's certainly not the one they were hoping to walk into next week with. 

Much had been made of how UMD would handle the Wildcats going into the weekend; throughout the first set, it looked like the Bulldogs would be able to stay toe-to-toe with them. The set was tied at eight different points between 3-3 and 19-19. Neither team had held a lead of higher than two points before Wayne State took a 22-19 advantage. The Bulldogs played from behind a little more than they played with an advantage over the course of the set, but their deficits were never insurmountable. That was until the Wildcats went on a 6-1 run after the score was last tied at 19 apiece to close out the set 25-20. The Bulldogs didn't fare all that well offensively in this set- their leading scorer in Sydney Lanoue had five errors to counteract her team-leading five kills. Altogether, the Bulldogs had eight attacking errors. Madison Gordon had 12 assists. 

The second set started coming out of the press as a carbon-copy of the first. In fact, from 1-1 to 8-8 alone, the score had been tied eight times- so, every step of the way. It was at that 8-8 marker that something changed. The Wildcats went on a 7-2 run that UMD head coach Jim Boos spent both of his timeouts trying to stymie. This was a futile effort, as Wayne State would come out of the second of those breaks and put up a 4-1 run to make the score 20-11. From there, the Wildcats were able to cruise to a 25-16 set victory off the back of their big lead that proved too much to overcome for the Bulldogs with so little wiggle room to work with. It didn't help that the Wildcats were blocking machines throughout this set, racking up five total team blocks on six block assists and two solo blocks. Those two solo efforts each came from Maggie Brahmner, who was a defensive force all day Saturday. She paired those two individual blocks with three block assists. It doesn't make matters much better that these blocks were happening to a team that continued to struggle offensively. Grace Daak led her team in this set with just three kills. The Bulldogs racked up 11 attack errors compared to just four for the Wildcats.  Gordon had just eight assists. 

The third set had the same eerily consistent starting tone as the other two, the teams trading blows until the score was again 8-8. This time, a 12-4 Wildcat run made things 20-12. Once again, the Wildcats put things on cruise control until they arrived at their destination of a 25-15 set win and a 3-0 match victory. The Bulldogs again lost significant ground because of errors, out-erroring the Wildcats in this set 9-2. Cianna Selbitschka's team-leading kill figure was just four, while the team's assist leader, Maddi Kealy, had just six. 

By the end of the match, the Bulldogs had just six total team blocks to the Wildcats' 12. This is mere hours removed from a day in which the Bulldogs had hosted a block party of their own in Romano against Augustana. A figure equally as damning is that UMD had 28 attacking errors across the three sets compared to just 11 for the Wildcats. 28 is the most attacking errors the Bulldogs have had since they had 33 when they had to come all the way back from 2-0 down against Drury in the very first match of the season. While it's certainly fair to say that the Wildcats beat the Bulldogs on Saturday, it's not crazy to say that the Bulldogs also played a massive role in their own defeat. 

Trying to diagnose what went wrong on Saturday, Boos alluded to a certain spark absent from his team against Wayne State, one that had been present in Friday's match against Augustana. He also identified the Wildcats themselves as an obvious problem point. 

"You come off of a night like we had last night where everything felt so good and in rhythm and the energy was good... it just didn't have that same feeling, and we were really searching and struggling to find a way to pull that back out of each other, and we just never really found our place," Boos said. "And you credit Wayne for not making us comfortable for sure."

When you get uncomfortable, you tend to try to change the circumstances leading to the discomfort. That's what Boos did Saturday when he implemented a 6-2 system and relied more heavily on Kealy's serving abilities than usual. Boos called back upon the aforementioned Drury match as part of his rationale behind such a change. 

"We had been in that position before, including in the first match of the year where things aren't going well and we've got to try something," Boos said. "In that match, we tried (Lanoue) on the outside, and that changed that entire match. Today, the hope was to throw the 6-2 out there and have that change something. Unfortunately, it just didn't make enough of a difference where we ever really got back in the game."

This proves to put a strange bow on the season thus far, it being book ended with tough situations met with much different results. However, there are many more stories for this UMD squad to write, and they'll start writing them this coming weekend during another tough road trip. The Bulldogs will have to get to work right away if they want to make sure the 1 in their record is a mere blip, something Boos is well aware of. 

"We're back to two top-ten teams out of our next three (SMSU and St. Cloud State), and Sioux Falls is no treat either. That's what I told them- it's got to be a quick turnaround. We can't wallow. I think we need to watch this and learn from it, and figure out what it is we didn't do particularly well and come ready to work on Monday and use these next four days to really refocus on the things that we need to do to get better "