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7pm

University of Northern Colorado

Colorado State University

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Kortney Lockey

/ Women's Volleyball

Photo by: Dean Popejoy

8/27/2017 4:55:00 PM | Women's Volleyball

Regional rivals play each other for the 11th consecutive year, this time in Fort Collins

By: Matthew Kushar, UNCBears.com

GREELEY, Colo. - The Bears will travel north on Tuesday for their annual matchup against Colorado State, a 7 p.m. contest at Moby Arena in Fort Collins, Colo. Both teams played matches this weekend against Central Florida and Duke in the Northern Colorado Classic.

UNC (0-2, 0-0) looks to build on the experience from last weekend and focus on becoming a better team moving forward.

Two games into the season, the team will need to be more consistent on offense and improve its serving.

Against Duke, Northern Colorado committed seven service errors and recorded only one service ace. The good news for the Bears is that the team seemed to put its offensive strategy together in the third set. UNC attacked more frequently and cut down on its errors to ultimately improve its attack percentage. Kortney Lockey recorded a .571 attack percentage and did not commit an error in the third set. Alex Kloehn had 10 attacks and four kills, also with no errors in the third. The offense for the Bears actually performed better than the Blue Devils in regard to attack percentage, with a .333 to .312 advantage.

The turnaround is quick for Northern Colorado and the Bears will ultimately move on from the weekend matches and turn their attention to Colorado State.

Head coach Lyndsey Oates isn't looking in the rear-view mirror.

"We won't talk a whole lot specifically about Duke," she said. "My list of things we need to work on will be coming up for weeks. Those are issues that any good team is going to present. There is not going to be a whole lot more conversation about this match. We have to get ready for Colorado State on Tuesday."

Colorado State (1-1, 0-0 Mountain West) was picked to win the Mountain West Conference for the fourth consecutive season in the conference preseason poll. CSU also lost to Duke over the weekend in five sets at Moby Arena. The match included a 32-30 third set that Duke won, and the fifth set went back and forth until Duke finally prevailed 20-18. On Saturday, the Rams defeated Central Florida, 3-1. The Knights were coming off a 3-2 defeat to Duke in a match played at Bank of Colorado Arena.

UNC faces another team with considerable size in CSU. The Rams have four preseason All-Mountain West selections with middle blockers Kirstie Hillyer and Alexandra Poletto. Outside hitter Snaja Cizmic and setter Kaite Oleksak also made the preseason award list.

With UNC and CSU playing common opponents in their first matches, the Bears will have a good metric to judge CSU's ability.

"We have film from last night," Oates said. "We scouted the Duke-Colorado State game. We will scout tonight's match where they're playing Central Florida so these are teams we are familiar with."

Previous Match, Aug. 30, 2016
Northern Colorado and Colorado State met last season in Greeley with the Rams defeating the Bears, 3-1. Graduated Bear Ashley Guthrie had 31 assists and 11 digs, while Lockey tallied 13 kills. Cizmic led the Rams with a match-high 15 kills and five blocks to secure the victory.