Dec. 5, 2008
DAYTON, Ohio - Appearing in the NCAA Tournament for the fifth time in the past six years, the UD volleyball team fell 3-1 (25-21, 24-26, 23-25, 18-25) in a hard fought match with the Western Michigan Broncos.
It was a back-and-forth match of runs between two disciplined teams, but the Flyers were undone by some costly errors. Dayton committed 23 in the game and hit just .139. With the loss, UD dropped to 21-13 overall and WMU improved to 27-6.
"I'm proud of our team, in a bigger sense, of our ability to stay together throughout the course of the season and get better and put ourselves in this situation to play here," Head Coach Kelly Sheffield said. I think that shows an awful lot about the character of our team, and I think that it's something that we're all pretty proud of."
The Flyers were led by middle blocker Lindsay Fletemier, who landed 17 kills, but the only other Flyer to reach double digits in that category was Nicole Bateman with 10. Bateman also led the squad with 23 digs.
With 1,647 of the Flyer Faithful on-hand, Dayton came out and handled the under-sized Broncos in the first frame, 25-21. Nevertheless, the momentum started to swing in the other direction in set two when the Flyers, who led as late as 19-18, allowed WMU to come back and even the match, 26-24.
The Flyers were right in it again in sets three and four, but the Broncos shut the door each time. Dayton battled back from a 19-24 deficit in set three with four straight kills, before WMU's Jillian Mitchell settled the issue with a kill from setter Allyson Doyle. Dayton was also tied with Western Michigan as late as 18-18 in set four, but gave it away with five errors during the last seven points.
"When the games were on the line, they did not make errors," Sheffield said. "They kept the ball off the floor and we got in some pretty good rallies there, but we were ending the plays. And unfortunately when the games were on the line, we were ending them negatively for us."
The Broncos waged a balanced attack on the Flyers, who keyed in on WMU's Michelle Moore and held her to a .022 hitting percentage. Moore, however, got plenty of help as the Broncos had three players reach double digits in kills and another two with nine and eight apiece.
Western Michigan will now get a crack at a Tulane team which knocked off Tennessee Tech earlier in the evening. The match is scheduled for tomorrow at 6 p.m. in the Frericks Center.
