Volleyball

MINNEAPOLIS – The Mount Mary volleyball team came within one point of recording its first set victory of the year Saturday, but the Blue Angels dropped all six sets of the North Central Triangular, falling 3-0 to both Crown College and the host Rams of NCU.

The Blue Angels opened the day playing the Storm of Crown, falling in a frustrating 25-17, 25-9, 25-5 match. The Blue Angels managed only 11 kills across all three sets to go with 22 errors and -.149 hitting.

In the second match of the day, Mount Mary hit a dismal -.276 in the first set in a 25-6 defeat, but improved a bit, hitting .033 in the second set in a 25-18 loss.

The Blue Angels were in control of set three after a kill by Wishau put them up 21-16. However four Mount Mary hitting errors flanked by three NCU kills sacrificed the lead, 23-21. After swapping points before a MMU timeout, three straight Ram hitting errors gave the Blue Angels their first set point, 25-24.

North Central truly dictated the exciting finish, tallying two kills, then a hitting error, then another kill and another hitting error to lock the third set at 27-27. Finally, despite racking up 17 hitting errors in the third set alone, two kills from the home team squashed any Mount Mary threat as the Rams eked out a 29-27 win.

Defensively, Mount Mary outdug (62 to 58) and outblocked (5.0 to 2.0) North Central, but tallied one-third as many kills (15 to 45).

Mount Mary will return to action Tuesday night against Milwaukee School of Engineering, which it will play for the third time this season and twice in the past week. Wednesday the Raiders handled the Blue Angels in a dominating 25-11, 25-10, 25-12 performance at the Bloechl Center. Game time for Tuesday's matchup is 7 pm.