No Treats In St. Joseph

ST. JOSEPH, Minn. (10/31/15)—Concordia found no treats in their match at St. Benedict on Halloween. The Cobbers were swept by the Blazers 25-16, 28-26, 25-19 in the regular-season finale for both teams.

The loss ends a two-match win streak for the Cobbers and drops Concordia's record to 15-10 overall and 7-4 in the MIAC entering the conference postseason. The Cobbers will now enter the league playoffs as the No.5 seed and play at No.4-seed St. Mary's  on Tuesday, Nov. 3 at 7 p.m.

St. Benedict ends their regular season with a 17-8 mark in all matches. CSB is 8-3 in conference play and will enter the postseason as the No.3 seed. They will host No.6 on Tuesday. The playoff roles would have been reversed if CC would have won in St. Joseph.   

The match hinged around the final points in the second set. After starting slow and dropping the opener 25-16, the Cobbers roared back in the middle set to take a 21-19 lead. St. Ben's won the next three points to grab a 22-21 lead and then teams would trade points until the score was tied at 25-25.

Concordia held off two set points and had set point of their own at 26-25 after a kill from Kathleen Lippert. Unfortunately the match would completely change in the final three points as the Blazers were able to come up with a kill, a service and then an attack error by the Cobbers.

The 28-26 win took the wind out of the sails of Concordia and they dropped the final set 25-19.

"I think the outcome might have been different if we had pulled off the win in the second set," commented head coach Tim Mosser. "I don't know if we would have won the match but it would have probably gone to five sets. We were just never able to recover from that loss."

Concordia hit .115 for the three sets as opposed to .293 for St. Ben's. The Blazers had a 45-35 edge in kills and also came away with 11 more digs than the Cobbers.       

Freshman Lydia Hansen had career highs in kills and attack percentage to lead the Cobber offense. The middle hitter finished with 11 winners and had a .286 attack percentage. Her previous season high was seven kills at St. Olaf.

Senior Olivia Wangensteen had a team-high 14 digs and also posted seven kills. Heather Beaner came up with five blocks and Jena Klaphake posted a team-high 17 assists.   

WHAT'S NEXT: The Cobbers will be returning to the MIAC playoffs after a one-year hiatus. Concordia will face the Cardinals on Tuesday with the winner earning a spot in the MIAC semifinals. Concordia lost to St. Mary's 3-0 earlier in the season in a match also played in Winona. The two teams faced each other in the conference quarterfinals back in 2013 with SMU winning 3-0 in Moorhead. CC is 13-10 in MIAC tournament matches which includes a 5-4 mark in quarterfinal contests.