If the season had to end on a loss, it ended on the best loss you could have, a five-set, hard-fought back-and-forth battle with a power-four school in the championship of a postseason tournament.
In a back-and-forth match, BGSU volleyball was unable to come away victorious, falling in five sets to the Arizona Wildcats.
It started out great, the first set won by BG coming back from a seven-point deficit midway through. Nineteen kills were what it took to beat Arizona, five from Mia Tyler and Lauryn Hovey and four from Jessica Andrews, playing pretty even with the Wildcats until Amanda Otten ended the first with an ace in a 29-27 extra-point effort.
After being stomped offensively in the second set, they rebounded to a 25-18 victory in the third, doubling Arizona’s kill total and forcing them to nine errors in one set and a .062 hitting percentage.
Head coach Charita Stubbs and the Wildcats held the Falcons to a similar performance in the fourth set, a sub .100 hitting percentage, and only nine kills in a 25-17 match-tying set loss. This forced a fifth set in what was, up until that point, one of the tightest matches BG played all season.
Jordan Wilson and Jaelyn Hodge represented their match performance well in the fifth set. All six kills from Arizona came from the two, on 14 of 18 total attempts for the team. Hodge added an ace and two blocks, while Wilson added two digs and a solo block as well.
The two played to a 10-2 score midway through that fifth set, a hole BG would never crawl out of completely. Bowling Green took two in a row at match point for UA, but a swing from Tyler that hit the top of the net and spun out of bounds secured a national championship for Arizona in the NIVC.
Despite many tight scores, Bowling Green fell quite short of Arizona in kills, assists, and blocks, essentially tallying the same number of aces and reception errors. BG’s .169 hitting percentage was their fifth-worst hitting percentage this season and worst since September 22 at Ohio State.
The Falcon’s five worst hitting games of the season came against power four schools (Illinois, Cincinnati, Ohio State x2, Arizona), but Arizona was the only match in which they forced five sets.
Hodge won the MVP award for the tournament, while Wildcat teammates Wilson and Avery Scoggins made the NIVC all-tournament team. Hovey and Tyler were all-tournament as well, Tyler with 66 kills, 12 digs, 11 blocks, and 72.5 points, and Hovey with 78 kills, nine aces, 45 digs, 19 blocks, and 97 total points in five matches played.
With Tyler, senior Falcons Lindsey LaPinta, Jordan Newblatt and Alexis Mettille played their last volleyball match in their career in the NCAA and the Orange and Brown.
Mettille played five seasons under head coach Danijela Tomic, LaPinta, and Tyler four and Newblatt only one season, transferring from Marist College but making a sizable impact in 2024.
The Falcons end their historic season with a 25-10 overall record and 16-2 in Mid-American Conference (MAC) play, along with a MAC regular season championship and eventually runner-ups in the NIVC.
