5 hours Ago By Brad Elliott Schlossman
GRAND FORKS — UND began chipping away at a big deficit in the third set. It started defensively with Izzie McCormick making digs to keep points alive. It continued with North Dakota State making attacking errors.
All of the sudden, the 20-13 deficit turned into a 23-22 UND lead. The Fighting Hawks were two points away from taking the set and a 2-1 lead in the rivalry matchup. But the Bison regrouped just in time.
NDSU pulled out the third set 26-24 and went on to win the rivalry matchup 25-22, 17-25, 26-24, 25-17 in the Betty Engelstad Sioux Center. "The biggest thing is we have to stay aggressive," Bison coach Jennifer Lopez said. "We had a pretty big lead in Set 3.
It's good to be in that position but it's also really tough to maintain that composure and finish a set. We had some struggles in there offensively, but I think we regrouped when we needed to. You don't like to go through those ups and downs, but we definitely regrouped.
"They were making a lot of defensive plays that were turning into a lot of points. They were taking care of the ball on their side. It caught us off guard on what we needed to do momentum-wise.
Offensively, I think we had to battle pretty hard for every point we were earning." It marked UND's fifth-straight loss. The Fighting Hawks are now 1-7 in Summit League play and 8-11 overall.
NDSU continued its recent control of the rivalry. After UND won eight of nine over the Bison from 2011-18, the Fighting Hawks are 2-12 against their in-state rivals since. "Really good battle against a really good team," UND coach Jesse Tupac said.
"Really impressive defensive effort all around. Izzie had 23 digs, which is a massive amount in a four-set match. We had four different people in double-digit digs.
Elizabeth Norris was one away from making it five people with double-digit digs, which is a huge effort from all of our back court." Tupac was pleased that UND held two-time first-team all-Summit League pick Ali Hinze to eight kills — one off her season low. "To be able to really shut down their go-to attacker and force them to beat us in other ways was a really nice effort from our team defensively," Tupac said.
Offensively, it wasn't as clean. UND hit just .098 percent.
Lauren Perugini led the Fighting Hawks with 13 kills. Paige Barber had seven, while Vanessa Washington and Vanessa Imoh had six each. Teagan Timperley had 20 assists and 14 digs.
Lauren Jansen led NDSU with 10 kills. Hinze, Alexis Boling and Ally Barth all had eight. The Bison hit .
129. NDSU improved to 4-4 in Summit League play and 8-9 overall. "Finding a rhythm against a good UND team is always tough," Lopez said.
"Regardless of win-loss and how we're both doing, it's always going to be a competitive team. I think we battled through some things and were able to find more ways to score points." That was especially the case at the end of the third set.
"You don't love losing a set," McCormick said. "But we had the momentum there. We were down by seven.
I think to come back and to put the pressure back onto NDSU and relieve that from ourselves, we can still play good volleyball even when we don't feel great. I thought we had the momentum going into that fourth set. Regardless, it was a really, really good fight.
".
