saint paul, minn. - the golden bears finished off their weekend with a sweep of #25 northern michigan, improving to 4-0 on the season and extending their home match winning streak to 52. The match was somewhat of an offensive struggle compared to the first three this weekend as nmu held them to .314 hitting, that stat is an insight to how dominate the offense was this weekend.
ellie duffy led all hitters with nine kills and four players were right behind here with eight.
amanda konetchy finished the match with 39.
box score
in the match
cassie haag,
kayla koenecke,
katie habeck and
megan carlson all had eight kills.
taylor fieldsted led the team with 10 digs, carlson and koenecke each had nine. Koenecke finished the night without committing an error and hitting .615. Concordia won the sets by a score line of 25-17, 25-23, 25-8.
concordia and northern michigan went back and forth in set one. Nmu held a 9-7 lead midway through the match before cu rattled off four straight points to take an 11-9 lead. Northern michigan never got back in the match as the golden bears never looked back and took a 20-13 lead late in the set. Ellie duffy had five kills alone in the first set. Concordia took set one 25-17 and hit .500.
the second set was extremely competitive as nmu figured out how to stop the cu offense for a set. Northern michigan jumped out to a 14-9 lead causing brady starkey to use the first timeout of the year. The largest lead of the set was at 15-9 in favor on northern michigan. Cu dug down at that point and after an error and thunderous block from habeck and carlson forced a quick timeout. The timeout did not work as a kill by koenecke, and attack error and another block put cu within one at 15-14. Another timeout was used by nmu to try and slow the momentum. It again did not work as cu scored two more out of the break and took a 16-15 lead.
from there on out it was another back and forth battle down to the wire. With the match tied at 21 cu rattled off two straight points to take a 23-21 lead and ended up taking the set 25-23.
the golden bears took the momentum the gained from the set two win and used it jump out to 10-4 lead early in set three. Northern michigan never appeared to be in the set as concordia hit .609 with just two errors. With the score 14-6 cu went on a 11-2 run to close out the set.
next up for the golden bears will be their annual trip to the metro/regis premiere in denver, colo. Concordia will play a total of four matches on the weekend.
