INDIANAPOLIS—The Bellarmine University volleyball team came up on the short end of an epic battle in the opening round of the Great Lakes Valley Conference Championship, falling in five sets to Rockhurst (22-25, 27-25, 17-25, 25-21, 10-15).
The Knights got career performances from Jaclyn Ohlmann, who shattered her own school record with 50 digs in today's match, and Krista Gibson, who set career highs in both kills with 26 and digs with 16. Ohlmann also established a new Bellarmine record for digs in a season with 550.
Setter Bailey BredenbeckCorp was just one shy of her career high with 60 assists as she became just the third player in Bellarmine history to eclipse 3,000 assists in a career.
Even with Bellarmine's record-setting accomplishments, Rockhurst managed to pull out the five-set win thanks in large part to their blocking game and by minimizing their own mistakes. The Hawks out-blocked the Knights 15.5 to 6 and did not record a service error while committing just 18 attack errors in 228 total attacks.
Bellarmine, the No. 3 seed from the East, had woeful starts in both sets one and three and never could recover. In set one, Rockhurst—the No. 2 seed from the West—opened up a commanding 16-3 lead before the Knights made a comeback to close within just two at 24-22. However, a Bellarmine service error handed the first set to the Hawks 25-22.
The third set was similar to the first in that Rockhurst bolted out to a big lead (9-0) before Bellarmine fought back to make it close. The Knights closed to within three at 13-10 but another run by the Hawks built the lead to 19-11. Momentum then shifted to BU, who took five of the next six points to creep back to within striking distance at 20-16. After a Rockhurst timeout, the Hawks halt the Bellarmine run with a Maggie Hummel kill. Bellarmine answered on the next point, but Rockhurst closed out the third set on a 4-0 run to win 25-17.
Sets two and four saw the Knights get off to better starts, and as a result pulled out victories in both. In the second set, Rockhurst scored first, but Bellarmine grabbed the lead with two straight points. A tight game the entire way, Bellarmine never trailed after the initial point until the Hawks finally took a slim lead at 23-22. The Knights then had to fight off two set points before senior outside hitter Alyson Harmeling got the kill to claim set two 27-25.
The fourth set was a back and forth affair that saw the Knights score four in a row to turn an 18-20 deficit into a 22-20 lead. Bellarmine went on to take the fourth set 25-21 as Gibson set a new career high in kills with 24 to record the deciding point.
In the fifth set, the Hawks used a 5-0 run to take the game from a 3-3 tie to an 8-3 advantage. Although Bellarmine fought back to cut it to one at 9-8, the momentum swung back into Rockhurst's favor as they took five of the match's final seven points to secure the victory 15-10.
In addition to the record-setting numbers posted by Gibson and Ohlmann, Paula Byrns recorded 20 kills for a season high, and like Gibson, posted a double-double by also registering 14 digs. Other top performances included 14 kills by Harmeling and freshman Paige Stewart's 17 digs.
On the other side of the net, Rockhurst placed four hitters in double digit kills, led by Kelsey Stratman's 17. The Hawks also had five players with double digit digs with libero Victoria Mahl's 37 leading the way.
Bellarmine falls to 18-8 on the season and now must await the decision of the NCAA selection committee to see if they will get the school's first-ever bid to the NCAA Championship. Heading into the GLVC tourney, the Knights were ranked ninth in the Midwest with eight teams from the region getting invitations. The selections will be announced on a webcast at 10 p.m. Sunday on www.ncaa.com.
Rockhurst improves to 26-6 on the year and will face the winner of the Indianapolis and Wisconsin-Parkside match in the GLVC semifinals tomorrow at 7:30 p.m.
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