Minnesota Duluth 3 Wayne State 0
#7 Minnesota Duluth ended the season for the #10 Wayne State College volleyball team Thursday afternoon with a 3-0 win over the Wildcats in the opening game of the NCAA Central Regional in Kearney, Nebraska at the UNK Health and Sports Center. The scores of the match were 25-14, 25-23 and 25-19. WSC ends the season 23-8 while UMD advances to Friday's semi-finals with a 28-3 mark.
Minnesota Duluth jumped out to an early 11-3 lead over the Wildcats in the first set and built their biggest lead of the set to 12 points at 20-8 following a 9-5 run. The Bulldogs closed out WSC in the first set 25-14 as UMD hit .346 with 13 kills on 26 attacks with four errors while the Wildcats hit .031 with nine kills and were plagued by eight attack errors in the set. Minnesota Duluth was able to outblock Wayne State 4-1 in the first set of the match. Cori Hobbs led the Wildcat attack with three kills in the first set.
Neither team was able to establish momentum early in a back-and-forth second set with no lead bigger than three for either team as Minnesota Duluth lead 13-10. The Wildcats then used a 6-6 run to tie things up at 16-16. The two teams then exchanged six straight points to make it 19-19. Wayne State regained the lead at 20-19 and built to a 22-20 leadafter trailing since leading 4-3. UMD then scored four straight to go up 24-22. Minnesota Duluth was able to close out the set on a 6-4 run to take a 2-0 advantage after two sets. The Wildcats hit .200 with 11 kills and five errors on 30 attacks while the Bulldogs hit .237 with 17 kills and eight errors on 38 attacks. Mindy Moody led the 'Cats in kills with five in the set. There were nine occassions in the set where the score was tied and there were four lead changes.
The Bulldogs once again came out firing on all cylinders building a 10-2 lead in the third set. Wayne State then went on a 6-3 run to force the Bulldogs to take a timeout at 13-8. Wayne State continued to fight back as McKenna Reagan notched a service ace to make it 18-15 Wildcats and the following play Mindy Moody and Tatum Wroblewski stuffed a Bulldog attack to bring it to 18-16. An attack error the following play by Duluth made it 18-17. Moody then notched another kills to bring it to 18 all. UMD then had a block and a kill to bring their lead back to 20-18. After another kill by Duluth, Moody recorded another kill to bring the 'Cats within two points at 21-19. Two straight kills by the Bulldogs extended their advantage to 23-19 over Wayne State. Minnesota Duluth closed out the match with two more consecutive points to take the set 25-19.
“Minnesota Duluth played great today,” said WSC head coach Scott Kneifl in his post game press conference. “They were in system the entire match and were hard to stop…it wasn't our day. We couldn't get into a flow early and we struggled with our ball handling, it really felt like it was our first game of the year instead of our last but give them credit they made more plays than us…hats off to them.”
Wayne State hit .100 in the match with 29 kills and 19 errors on 100 attacks while the Bulldogs hit .255 with 44 kills and 18 errors on 102 attacks. Minnesota Duluth held a block advantage 10-7 over WSC while also holding the edge in assists (43-26), service aces (6-3) and digs (48-36).
Individually, the Wildcats were led by Mindy Moody with 10 kills while Tali Fredrickson and Cori Hobbs each notched six, Alex Armes recorded four, Melanie Plackie chipped in two kills and Shelby Schultz added one kill. McKenna Reagan and libero Leigh Connot led Wayne State with eight digs apiece while Fredrickson had six and Tatum Wroblewski contributed six. Wroblewski also accounted for 24 of the team 26 assists.
Minnesota Duluth will advance to the second round of regionals as they were led by Kate Lange with 15 kills and April Hansen was also in double-digits with 12. Lange also notched 13 digs and four service aces in the match.
Wayne State made it's seventh straight appearance in the NCAA Tournament with five seniors closing their careers with the Wildcats. They are Nicole Brungardt, Leigh Connot, Tali Fredrickson, Mindy Moody and Shelby Schultz.
