Kloehn, King Lead Way in @UNCBearsVB Victory Over Denver

Wednesday, September 7

Greeley, Colo.

7:00 pm

University of Northern Colorado

4-3

Denver

4-3

Denver

Northern Colorado

Photo by: Dean Popejoy

9/7/2016 10:56:00 PM | Women's Volleyball

Box Score

Natalya King and Alex Kloehn led the way for UNC over DU Wednesday night

By: Ryan Pfeifer, UNCBears.com

GREELEY, Colo. – Northern Colorado's (4-3) volleyball team extended its win streak to three-games on Wednesday night when they defeated the visiting Denver (4-3) Pioneers 3-1 (25-17, 17-25, 25-20, 25-23).

Box Score

How it Happened
A key to the whole night for the Bears was the play of middle blockers Alex Kloehn and Natalya King, who got started early and never slowed down. In the first set the duo paced the team with seven kills and just one error on nine swings. Kim Weissmann also played a big factor in the 25-17 set victory with three kills of her own and a .500 attack percentage.

DU would respond in the second set though. After being held to .118 hitting the first set, Denver hit .412 in the second set. Weissmann continued to have the hot hand for the team with four more kills in the set.

Following the break, UNC gained the upper hand in a back and forth third set with a 9-4 run to end the set. In the set Kloehn had four total blocks as both offenses had their lowest attack percentages of the night at .132 for UNC and .071 for DU.

It was all the King and Kloehn show in the final set for the Bears. The duo who had been a mismatch all night combined for 13 kills in the final set and committed not attack errors. The final four points of the night for Northern Colorado came from the duo.

Game Changers
After starting to breakout on Saturday for Northern Colorado, the middle blockers once again played a big role for the team on Wednesday. Alex Kloehn and Natalya King had 28 of the teams 54 kills and apart of 7.5 of the team's 12 blocks. Kloehn led the team in both categories with 15 kills and 10 total blocks
(3 BS – 7 BA) and had a .538 attack percentage. King wasn't far behind Kloehn with 13 kills and a .458 percentage.

Notables
- Alex Kloehn's 10 total blocks were a career high for her, and the first time since 2014 when Andrea Spaustat had 10 against Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.
- The 13 kills by Natalya King were a new career high for her. She broke the previous record she set in the last match against Penn.
- Once again UNC's back row defense showed well for the team with four players recording double figure digs. Kayla Uyemura led the team with 16, the third time this year she has tied her career high.
- Kim Weissmann had a solid match for the Bears earning her first start of the year as she works her way back from injury. She finished the night with eight kills and a .318 attack percentage.

Quotables

Alex Kloehn

On what led to the success tonight
I have had practices like tonight, but I have just been pushing through and knew it would pay off. We train really hard and it transferred over to games which is really exciting. Ashley and I are connecting really well right now. That partially has to do with the other side of the net. We have been having really good matches, because we have been working hard as a team and I have been working on my footwork to getting up on time.

Natalya King

On the strong recent play
It's a matter of us getting up in timing with Ashley and giving her a window to see where the ball needs to go. We have been working hard on doing that and in our gap sets and being open to her and let her shoot it to us.

About earning her role this year
You never want to get conferrable, you never want to feel like you have done all you can do. Emily (O'Neil), who is the one that keeps pushing me. She is a great teammate working her butt off during practice. She is pushing me to be a better person and I am pushing her to be a better person and we let the best middle go out and play. I may have a bad day and she will come in and do the same thing I did tonight, we have each other's back no matter what.

Lyndsey Oates

On the play of the middle blockers
It has been a continual process for our middles, from last year to being a learning year for them to now this year it being a strength for us again. I think that is what we are known for. If you ask all of the conference schools UNC has strong middles. We definitely have that again, it took us a few matches to develop this year, but I think we are there now. Alex and Natalya are right there and we also have Emily, who will provide depth for us and could of put of the same numbers tonight for us as the other two did. I like how fast we are going up the middle. They had a lot of size tonight, so that fact that we out blocked them shows what we can be as the season progresses.

The upcoming weekend's matches
Going into this weekend, Denver is similar to the team's we will face this weekend, so I challenged the team with finishing out the week strong and going 4-0. It will be a challenge though since we leave tomorrow morning and then have a pair of matches on Friday.

What's Next?
The Bears are back on the road after Wednesday's match with three games in Stockton, California at the Pacific Community Classic. Northern Colorado has a pair of game on Friday against South Dakota (11 am) and Pacific (7 pm) before closing the week on Saturday with a match against Oregon State (2 pm).

UNC will not return home until the Big Sky opener on September 24 against Northern Arizona.