WARRENSBURG, Mo. – The seventh-seeded and 15^th-ranked Concordia-St. Paul volleyball team (24-9) fell to fifth-seeded and sixth-ranked Washburn (29-5) in the NCAA Central Region Championship match in three sets (22-25, 20-25, 19-25) on Saturday night at the Multipurpose Building on the campus of Central Missouri.
 
Four the third consecutive season of play, the Golden Bears saw their postseason run come to a close in the region title match as they fell to 73-9 in NCAA Tournament action and 11-6 in region championship matches under head coach Brady Starkey.
 
CSP dropped to 4-3 all-time against the Ichabods as WU improved to 2-1 in NCAA Tournament play against the Golden Bears, both wins coming in region title matches.
 
Tori Hanson capped off her illustrious career with a match-leading 23 digs in the loss. Her 2,173 career digs and her 156 career service aces both rank third in program history.
 
Katie Mattson paced the Golden Bears with 11 kills while hitting .450 and collecting five blocks and Emma Schmidt added eight kills and seven digs. Jasmine Mulvihill chipped in nine kills, four digs and three aces while Teagan Starkey had 18 assists and Ellie Veldman finished with 14 and four blocks.
 
Hanson, Mattson and Schmidt all earned NCAA Central Region All-Tournament Team honors for the Golden Bears.
 
Allison Maxwell led the Ichabods with 14 kills and eight blocks while Allison Sadler contributed 39 assists and six digs in the win.
 
The two teams finished with nearly the same number of digs as WU just edged the Golden Bears 48-47 while CSP finished with a 6-5 advantage in aces. Washburn, meanwhile, compiled a big .301-.183 hitting edge, a 46-36 edge in kills as well as an 11.5-7.0 edge in blocks.
 
The first set saw very little separation between the two teams as neither side led by more than three throughout. The Ichabods jumped out to a 5-2 lead tied it up with three in a row. WU responded with a 3-0 run of their own and four of five to regained a three-point edge at 9-6 before another CSP burst evened it back up at 9-9. Washburn took the lead for good with three in a row as the two teams traded points the rest of the way. The Golden Bears managed to trim the gap back down to one at 23-22 to force a timeout, but back-to-back points for Washburn sealed the 25-22 set win.
 
It was more back and forth play in the second set as there were 15 ties, including eight in the first 16 points, and five lead changes as neither team led by more than two until the late stages of the set. A late 6-0 run for the Ichabods proved to be the difference as they turned a 17-17 tie into a 23-17 lead. Concordia took three of the next four to close the gap to four, but a kill for WU sealed the 25-20 win in the set as they took a 2-0 lead in the match.
 
There were seven more ties and two more lead changes in the third as Washburn once again pulled away late. Trailing 7-4 early, CSP stormed back to tie it at 9-9 before eventually taking a 15-14 lead following three consecutive aces for Mulvihill. That proved to be their only lead of the set, however, as the Ichabods closed on an 11-4 run to win the set 25-19 and complete the sweep.