Volleyball suffers defensive lapse in losing again in Montana

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MISSOULA, Mont. -- Northern Colorado got down big early in its first game against Montana on Saturday night and was never quite able to rebound in a 3-1 (18-25, 23-25, 25-23, 20-25) loss to the Grizzlies.

The Bears fell into a 7-1 hole almost before they could blink inside the Griz's West Auxilary Gym and ended up losing in Missoula for the fourth time in four tries since joining the Big Sky Conference.

A big reason for the four-game loss was Montana's .302 hitting percentage in the match. That mark is the highest any Northern Colorado foe has hit this season, and it's just the fourth time in the Bears' 19 matches this season that any opponent has hit .250 or better.

"We just didn’t defend as well as we needed to," Northern Colorado coach Lyndsey Benson said. "If a team’s hitting .300 against us, we’re not doing what we need to be doing blocking and defending from the back row."

Junior Ashley Lichtenberg led the Bears (11-8, 5-1 Big Sky) with 13 kills in the victory and hit at a .357 clip. Senior Allison Raguse was right behind with 12 kills and seven digs, and freshman Kelley Arnold had 12 kills (a career high a night after hitting 11 kills for the fifth time in her career) and a career-best five digs. 

Northern Colorado's best defensive effort came in its game-three victory, where it allowed Montana (8-10, 4-3) to hit just .129. The Bears were tied at 23 with the Griz in game three before freshman Marissa Hughes, who dished out 45 assists in the loss, hit a service ace and then saw the Griz's Paige Branstiter commit an attack error for Northern Colorado's two-point victory.

Other than that, Montana had an incredible amount of offensive success in earning their fourth Big Sky victory. The Griz hit .330 or better as a team in games one, two and four and had four players hit .330 or better.

Benson knows her Northern Colorado team will have to be better than that this coming week, as conference-powers Eastern Washington and Portland State come to Greeley to finish up the Bears' first run through their 2009 conference schedule.

"We'll work on that this week with a big weekend coming up for our program," Benson said. "That was pretty much the story of the match. They had their way with us in the three games they won."