The UB Volleyball team defeated Kent State 3–2 in the season finale, giving them an 8–8 record (their second best record ever in the MAC) and earning the #7 seed into the MAC Tournament. Buffalo has now made the tournament three years in a row, a program record.

This is quite an impressive accomplishment, considering the team started the year with 9 newcomers, seven of whom were freshman, a new head coach and a new coaching staff; plus their leading scorer from a year ago (also the MAC leader in points per set) transferred out of the program. After a 1–5 start in the MAC, it didn't seem like 8 wins was a possibility, but then Buffalo went 7–3 the rest of the way, defeating four of the top teams in the MAC.

The Bulls will face #6 Akron in the first round of the tournament on Thursday, November 21 at 7pm at the Stroh Center on the campus of Bowling Green University. Buffalo split their season matches with Akron, each team winning in five sets on the road. The Bulls have never in their history won a match at this stage of the MAC Tournament, with eight teams remaining in the tournament. A long time ago, when all 12 teams in the MAC made the tournament with first round games being played on campus sites, Buffalo twice won matches as the #10 seed, but they have never won a match when the tournament narrowed down to eight teams.

Against Kent State, the Bulls won sets 1 and 4, while Kent took sets 2 and 3, all of them very close sets, with those sets all won by three points or less. This set up what looked to be a tense fifth set, only to see Buffalo run out to a 13–7 lead. I know UB fans have this nightmare about losing a big lead to Kent State late, but fear not, dear readers, UB volleyball has got you covered — Buffalo managed to take the fifth set 15–11.

Buffalo was led by senior outside hitter Rachel Sanks, who scored 23 kills (one short of her career high set just two matches prior), senior outside hitter Polina Prokudina with 16, and sophomore right side Monika Šimkova had 12. It was the fourth time in the last 7 matches that Sanks had 20 or more kills, whose career high prior to this season was 17. Senior setter Scout McLerran set a career high with 7 kills, and for a while looked like she was on pace for a triple-double, eventually finishing with a double-double with 56 assists, 10 digs (plus 4 blocks and 2 aces). Šimkova led the team with 15 digs and sophomore libero Paige Beck had 14. Šimkova and freshman middle blocker Abby Leigh each had two aces. Senior middle blocker Kristina Nieves had a team high 5 blocks.

Notes:

• Senior defensive specialist Hannah Watson made her first appearance at the service line this year at 18–18 in the third set. Watson would serve 7 times in this match, recording her first ace of the year in the fourth set.
• Nieves returned to the starting lineup, replacing Leigh. Nieves had a strong offensive performance with 9 kills and hit 0.533, while Leigh was used primarily as a serving specialist in place of Nieves.
• This was the Bulls' 14th five-set match of the year, winning 8 of them. It was Kent State's seventh five-set match, the Golden Flashes had won all six previous five-set matches.
• Was that a back row attack? Yes it was! A rare (almost non-existent) event this year, McLerran sent a pipe set to Prokudina in the back row middle for an attack. Šimkova also got two back row attacks from the back right position. None of those came on scramble plays where the ball was accidentally passed to a back row player. Is this a new wrinkle in the offense, will we see this in the MAC tournament as well? Stay tuned.