Idaho volleyball comes up short against North Dakota
The Idaho volleyball team almost came back from a 2-0 deficit Thursday night in Memo- rial Gym, but the Vandals fell to the North Dakota Fighting Sioux 3-2 in a battle between the top two teams in the Big Sky North Division.
Idaho coach Debbie Buchanan gave her a team a pep talk after the first two sets.
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Idaho fell short in the fifth set against North Dakota Thursday. The Vandals play Northern Colorado at 7 p.m. Saturday in Memorial Gym.
“You got to still compete,” she said. “Every little play is going to matter. You got to go hard. If you guys want to win this, you got to go out and you got to show it.”
Down 2-0, Idaho didn’t give up as the Vandals came out of the locker room to win the third and fourth sets 25-21 each. Idaho grabbed a 6-5 lead in the fifth set, but eventually lost 15-11.
In the middle of the fifth set, junior setter Meredith Coba went down with an apparent knee injury and was helped off the court. The crowd, which was rowdy all game, fell completely silent as Coba laid on the court in pain.
“Sami (Parris) came in and did a great job off the bench,” Buchan- an said of Cobra’s backup. “She wasn’t affected at all so that’s all we can ask for … It’s always hard when you take a little break. We can tell it affected us a little bit. We got a little tight. The bottom line is though I think we were in all those plays to be in a position to win. We just have to fight through that.”
With the Idaho State Bengals having clinched the top seed for the Big Sky Tournament Nov. 20-22, Idaho and North Dakota were two teams in the hunt for the No. 2 seed.
Senior Stephanie Hagins, who is a middle blocker, led the Vandals with 15 kills on a .235 hitting percentage. Three other Vandals had double-digit kills, including sophomore Ali Forde with 14, freshman Becca Mau with 12 and senior Alyssa Schultz with 11.
Buchanan said one of the differences between the first two sets and the last two or three was ball control.
“I think they out ball-controlled us the first two games and the next two we passed better,” she said. “We dug and played defense better. We started hitting better. Offensively, we outhit them in games three and four. We have it in us.”
Idaho (15-12 overall, 11-4 Big Sky) concludes the regular season against another top team in the Big Sky North, Northern Colorado, at 7 p.m. Saturday in Memorial Gym.
Garrett Cabeza can be reached at [email protected]