Who is on to the National Invitational Volleyball Championship championship match? Who has had the second-longest postseason run in program history and longest since 1992? Who has played deeper into December than ever before in program history? Who is the first MAC team of all time to complete a reverse sweep in a postseason tournament?
Bowling Green State University Volleyball.
In the Fab Four match of the NIVC, BGSU volleyball (25-9) took down the St. John’s (24-13) Red Storm in Queens, New York, advancing to the final against Arizona. More amazing than the Falcons simply doing it was how they won three sets in a row after losing the first two to the home team.
It was undoubtedly a rough first two sets. BG had eight reception errors in total, allowing the Johnnies to record eight aces. Their attacking was down as well, and their blocking, while statistically decent, was visually off, allowing many St. John’s kills to be tooled off of late or sub-par blocking attempts.
BG’s highest-blocking middle blocker this season, Jessica Andrews, was absent from the block column in the first two sets amidst playing well offensively and sizable rotations, just not finding any success next to the net.
The outside hitter position (Mia Tyler, Jordan Newblatt, Edyta Waclawczyk) recorded only two blocking assists across the entire first two sets, essentially four players who had minimal blocking ability.
The main offender of this successful off-the-block attack plan was junior opposite hitter Erin Jones, who killed 12 of her 20 successful hits in the first two winning sets for St. John’s. An exploiter of the reception errors was middle blocker Magda Stambrowska, who knocked five aces in the first two sets while putting up three kills and three blocking assists.
For the third time this season, the Falcons flipped a switch after the first two set losses and came back to win the match. While the third set doesn’t qualify, the final two sets showed an effective representation of the team’s talent and sheer will.
The third set was rough for both teams, BG with 12 kills and seven errors for a .143 hitting percentage and St. Johns with 13 kills and nine errors for a .118. The separation in the tight 25-23 set score was the defense of BG, who had one more solo block and two fewer reception errors, giving them an edge on errors from the Johnnies.
The fourth and fifth were different entirely, the Falcons nailing 19 kills, two errors on 42 attempts, and hitting .404 in the final 31 points while picking up one solo block and 12 blocking assists to St. Johns’ two block assists.
On the final play of the game, Andrews received her fourth block assist of the match (all blocking coming in the final two sets), which earned her the BGSU Rally Scoring Era record for the most single-season total blocks at 155, a fitting end to a historic comeback for BG.
Heartbreakingly, St. John’s fell in their second straight season of NIVC play to a second straight season-ending reverse sweep in 2023, winning the first two and losing the next three sets to South Florida in the second round of competition.
The Falcons will next meet the Arizona Wildcats (23-9) in Tucson, Arizona, on Tuesday, Dec. 17.
Falcon Media Sports Network’s Ben Corak will have the call starting at 7:45 for pregame and 8 p.m. for first serve on WBGU 88.1 FM.
