Sports
Ohio Volleyball’s season ends with 3-1 loss to No. 6 Bowling Green in MAC Tournament
By: Marc Goldstein
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BOWLING GREEN, Ohio (WOUB) — The match between Ohio (14-17, 12-7 MAC) and Bowling Green (17-14, 11-8 MAC) illustrated a stark contrast between the two programs. Ohio is a young upstart that defied the odds this season to earn the No. 3 seed in the MAC Tournament. Conversely, Bowling Green is an experienced team that opened the season as the preseason favorite that overcame a number of injuries to make the field of six teams in its own arena. After winning the MAC regular season title last season, the MAC Tournament was held at the Stroh Center, adding another challenge for Ohio.
The match got off to a rather poor start for Ohio. After the set was tied at two apiece early, Bowling Green scored the next five points, highlighted by a kill from Jessica Andrews. From the opening point, it felt like Ohio was scrambling and out of system, something that it desperately needed to avoid. However, Ohio would not exactly respond to the early deficit with a run of its own. Gentry Brown would make it 8-4 with a kill, but Bowling Green would keep Ohio at arm’s length.
From the time it was 9-5 in favor of Bowling Green, there would be three straight points where a serve would not be returned. It started with a Bowling Green service error before Ohio committed one of its eight during the first set. Then, Andrews would send an ace of her own to the floor to make the lead 11-5.
The Bobcats would continue trying to get things moving in the right direction. Simply put, nothing was falling in the Falcons defense and the lack of service consistency made it difficult to get a rhythm going. Emily Waddell would pick up a kill to make it 15-11, but the Falcons would score four of the next five to make the score 19-12.
Ohio would make a last push in the first set when Bryn Janke got two service aces in a three-point stretch to make it a three-point set. However, Ohio never got any closer than three and Bowling Green won the set, 25-20.
The second set got off to as poor a start as Ohio could have expected. Bowling Green scored the first four points before Mady Long got Ohio on the board. For the majority of the first set, Bowling Green neutralized MAC Freshman of the Year Bailey Blair, taking away one of the engines that makes Ohio’s offense go. That continued in the second set as Lauren Hovey started to take over for Bowling Green. Hovey got two straight aces to make it 9-2 early in the second.
The Falcons would not let the Bobcats breathe or get anything going in the second as the advantage expanded all the way to nine. The Bobcats would score four straight points to make the score 12-7 after Olivia Gardner powered a kill through the left side of the Falcons defense. However, the remainder of the set was not very different from the beginning as the Falcons squeezed the life out of the Bobcats, led by Hovey’s four aces and five kills. The final score of the second set was 25-16, but it was never in doubt for the Falcons as they took a commanding two-set lead.
The third set was a gut check moment for Ohio as it looked to keep its season alive. For the first time all match, the teams were largely trading points to open the third. Every point by Bowling Green scored was answered by one from Ohio to tie the score. Ohio took its first lead of the set on a kill by Gardner to make it 7-6. The teams kept battling and Bowling Green took a modest advantage when it was 13-10.
However, that is where the Bobcats dug in and played their game. In a moment where the team could have folded and called it quits, the Bobcats made a charge and scored nearly at will. That effort culminated with a kill by Brown as the Bobcats took a 15-14 lead. The Bobcats would continue to expand that lead as they took advantage of a slew of errors from the Falcons. The lead would grow to five at 23-18 before the Bobcats would circle the wagons and win the third set, 25-19.
Coming into the fourth set, Ohio was riding high after such a positive ending to the third. However, Bowling Green was the team that came out with all of the momentum to begin the fourth. Bowling Green scored six of the first eight points in the set and took a commanding lead. Ohio would chip away at the deficit, eventually drawing even at 11 all. Bowling Green would respond with a 5-1 run as Ohio made a number of errors. Even after Ohio ended the run and made it a 18-16 advantage, Bowling Green was relentless.
This is the point where the Falcons started to truly flex its muscles. The Bobcats simply had zero responses to the next wave of offense for the Falcons, which was a 7-1 run to close out the match. The Bobcats were on the opposite end of a clinic by the Falcons, who hit at a .369 rate compared to the .205 for the Bobcats. Additionally, the Bobcats had more than double the attack errors (21) as compared to the Falcons (10).
Individually, the inability for Ohio to stop Hovey and Andrews was one of the reasons it saw its season come to a close. Hovey clocked 18 kills while Andrews had 11 of her own to go with four total blocks. The stars for Bowling Green played like it and Ohio’s two stars, Blair and Brown both hit well below .200 and had trouble finding space.
The Bobcats were left watching as the Falcons celebrated the upset win, but that should not overshadow such a strong season. From being projected to finish seventh in the Preseason Poll to a 2-14 start that included an 0-4 start to MAC play all the way to taking the third seed in the MAC Tournament, Ohio has a lot to hold its heads high over. The young roster for Ohio will only continue to get stronger with more experience on the floor together. Although the Cinderella season didn’t end with a glass slipper on Ohio’s foot, there is no shame in simply attending the ball and making it clear that another invitation would soon come.