The Wisconsin volleyball team knew Daly Santana was one of the hardest hitters in the Big Ten, and she showed off her powerful strike on Wednesday night.

Minnesota’s senior star had 68 attempts and 20 kills that eventually wore down the Badger defense in the five-set thriller.

Despite a career high 21 digs from setter Lauren Carlini and an outstanding defensive performance from libero Taylor Morey (a match-high 24 digs), Santana and the Golden Gophers’ attack was too much to overcome.

Minnesota’s offense revolved around Santana, a senior outside hitter from Puerto Rico, who came into Wednesday’s match with the third most kills per set in the conference.

Despite limiting her to a low hitting percentage, she was able to help break through the Badgers defense.

The Badgers won’t be able to put Santana and the rest of the Gopher attack in their rearview mirror just yet, as they travel to play the second match of a double header against their border rival this weekend.

Senior Taylor Morey said the challenge of playing against Santana is the speed of her shots.

“I think the challenge for defending someone like that is the pace is so quick and the tempo of their set is so fast that you have such a short amount of time to read the set and read the play,” Morey said. “So you have to be soft on contact.”

Wisconsin will need to do some work in the film room before their trip to Minnesota if they want a different result. Three Minnesota players had over eight kills.

Despite the defensive troubles that comes with playing a highly ranked team like Minnesota, Sheffield knows that in this rivalry, all the games are close.

“The interesting thing is, we’re going to have a couple days — both teams — to be able to figure out what went well and what’s got to be fixed,” he said. “We go back at slugging it out on Saturday.”