The Northern State volleyball team made it a clean sweep on Saturday, rolling past Minot State 25-11, 25-11, 25-10 for a Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference volleyball win at Wachs Arena.
Wolves Coach Brent Aldridge said the key to the win was the team’s serving.
“I thought we served really tough,” Aldridge said. “We ended up with 12 aces and five errors so that ratio’s pretty good.”
NSU jumped out to early leads to begin each set, which Aldridge also said was caused by the team’s aggressive serving.
“I think our serve got them out of system quite a bit,” Aldridge said. “We were getting a lot of free balls back. I think Minot just broke down passing-wise, and we sustained our serve.”
The Wolves led throughout the match, never trailing, thanks to aggressive serving, as well as a stout defensive performance.
“We had seven blocks, which isn’t great, and we dug a bunch of balls, so we’ll take that,” Aldridge said.
Offensively, the Wolves were led by Hanna Thompson with 12 kills. Thompson said it took time for her to settle into the match.
“I think I started off super slow, and I just made adjustments throughout the night, and it worked in my favor,” Thompson said.
Reese Johnson led the Wolves with six aces, while Abby Meister had a team-leading 13 digs. Morrissen Samuels had nine kills.
The Wolves host top-ranked Wayne State next Friday, and Thompson said the team will have to create a winning game plan.
“We are going to have to stop their middles, for sure,” Thompson said. “They have very big, physical middles, they have a good outside, so we’re going to have to get a gameplan to stop them.”
Aldridge reiterated that his team will need to stop Wayne State’s middles.
“Wayne is number one in the nation for a reason. They’re big and physical,” Aldridge said. “We’ve just got to serve, serve receive really well, try to put some pressure on them, get our right side involved. They are big in the middle, but if we get our right side involved and Morrissen has a good match, that’s a plus.”
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