FanPost

Spring Volleyball: Buffalo defeats Niagara and Canisius

The UB Volleyball team defeated Niagara 3–0 and Canisius 2–1 on Saturday at Alumni Arena in a spring tournament. Buffalo plays their final spring volleyball next Saturday at a tournament in Youngstown, OH.

The first set against Niagara was a real nail-biter, with neither team opening a large lead. With the score tied 23–23, Buffalo picked up two kills to end the set. Buffalo led the next set 11–10, but then ran away with the set 25–15. The third set was also lopsided, 15–7.

The Bulls dominated Canisius in the first set 25–10, with the highlight being three points in a row by setter Scout McLerran, coming on a solo block and then two consecutive aces. UB won a nail-biter 27–25 in the second set, despite Canisius having two set points. The Golden Griffins took the third set 15–11. It should be remembered that Canisius won the first two sets against UB in the fall, before Buffalo came back and won the match 3–2.

Both of Buffalo's regular outside hitters, 6–4 Polina Prokudina and 6–2 Andrea Mitrovic were sharp today. Middle blocker Megan Wernette was also sharp; she slammed down a number of kills on the slide, and came up with quite a lot of blocks. McLerran was able to send some fast-paced sets to Wernette, giving Wernette the advantage over the blockers. A week ago, McLerran was called for a lot of ball handling errors (unusual for her), but today this was not an issue. Libero Larra Bickelhaupt made some really nice digs, and served well. Defensive specialist Hannah Watson was also sharp on defense.

The Bulls continue to experiment to find a right-side attacker who can be effective. Raven Jordan was effective last weekend, but she was injured today. 6–4 redshirt freshman Marija Babic missed the fall season due to injury, wasn't in uniform last weekend, but she was in uniform today, warmed up with the team, even played in an impromptu 5-on-5 scrimmage against other Bulls between matches today, but she didn't actually appear in today's matches (I don't know why). So Buffalo used 5–10 Rachel Sanks, normally an outside hitter, at right-side (a position she played a year ago at times) in the first set of both matches, then Mitrovic and Prokudina also played right-side in the second and third sets of each match (I don't believe they have done that at UB before). All three were effective!

Notes:

  • Middle blocker Kristina Nieves picked up a number of blocks, but didn't participate in the offense much, other than attacking overpasses.
  • Prokudina last year served from the parking lot (okay, that's an exaggeration, but she stood way behind the end-line, where a basketball player would be out-of-bounds). Today she moved up to about 5 feet from the end-line to serve, but as the matches went on, she slowly crept back towards her previous position for serving. I didn't really detect any difference in the results.
  • New Athletic Director Mark Alnutt (ADMA) was in attendance.
  • Nate Oats spent part of the Canisius match shagging volleyballs, as there were no ball-boys. I guess that must be in his new contract.
  • Incoming UB Volleyball freshman Paige Beck was in attendance. I believe incoming freshman Paige Yoder was also in the stands, but I didn't confirm that.
  • The line judges today were apparently new line judges, in training, and at times gave either weak signals or no signals at all, and the more experienced officials spent time assisting them.

Trending Discussions