Although solo possession of second place in the Big Ten and an outside chance of a conference title were on the line, the No. 10 Wisconsin volleyball team (21-6, 13-4 Big Ten) fell flat against their border rival No. 12 Minnesota (20-7, 14-3) 26-30, 22-30, 30-18, 25-30.
"Timing is everything and [Minnesota] caught us at a time when we're not playing our best ball," UW head coach Pete Waite said. "It took us a while to come out of the funk that we've been in the last five days since the Northwestern match."
The loss not only dropped the Badgers into third place, but it ended Wisconsin's eight-match home conference winning streak dating back to last year.
After the Badgers and Gophers traded points for most of game one, Wisconsin led early on at 18-17. Following a Minnesota timeout, the Gophers went on a 10-2 run to put the game out of reach as the Badgers never got within four again.
Game two started out much like the first. Again, the Gophers used a 6-0 run in the middle of the match to separate themselves from the Badgers at 23-15.
"For the first two games, [Minnesota] was passing much better than we were," Waite said. "They were serving tougher and it kept us out of our offense."
Coming out of the locker room for game three, Wisconsin played with a sense of renewed energy as they led for almost the entire game. Freshman Brittney Dolgner and sophomore Audra Jeffers led the Badgers with seven and four kills respectively in the game.
"They were starting to remember what a good team they are," Waite said of the game-three turnaround. "They've got to get back to that. That is the thing for the last month they've been doing since the last Minnesota match."
"They got us rattled in game three to the point where we just fell apart," Minnesota head coach Mike Hebert said.
Wisconsin started out slow in game four before using an 11-4 run to pull ahead of the Gophers 16-13. There was a sense in the Field House that the Badgers might come from behind to beat Minnesota again, as they did the last two years at home.
"We made a comeback but we were still kind of spurting," Waite said. "[Game four] wasn't the solid game we played in the third and that we've shown we can play."
Wisconsin came into the game leading Minnesota in almost every statistical category so far this season. However, the Gophers beat the Badgers in every area of the game except serving.
Minnesota hit .252 for the match compared to Wisconsin only hitting .173. Contributing to the Badgers low numbers was the fact that seniors Maria Carlini and Amy Bladow and junior Taylor Reineke all had a negative hitting percentage.
Minnesota had four players with double-figure kills with senior middle blocker Meredith Nelson leading the squad with 17 kills. The Badgers were led once again by Dolgner, who led all players with 25 kills. Jeffers also eclipsed the double-digit figure with 13 kills.
That was not the biggest surprise, however. Wisconsin came in to the match as the fifth-best blocking team in the nation, and the Gophers out-blocked the Badgers 14 to 4.5.
"[Minnesota's] passing was very solid," Waite said contributed to Wisconsin being out-blocked. "Any time, whether it's them passing well or us passing well, you can run your offense, (and) you can split the blockers pretty well."
"If I would have told you that we would out-block Wisconsin 28-9.5 in the two matches we played against them [this year], I would have laughed," Hebert said. "That's how much respect I have for Wisconsin's block. We did and that was for me the more startling statistics of the match."
