Skylights off to a 3-2 start

With only three starters back, and mostly a young and new team Montana State University-Northern head volleyball coach Bill Huebsch wasn’t quite sure what he’d see when the Skylights opened the 2014 season in Spokane.

But after three days and five matches at the Sports Travel Northwest Invitational this past weekend, the picture, as far as the Skylights are concerned, is a little more clear.

Northern went 3-2 in five matches in Spokane, and according to Huebsch, it was a mixed bag as Northern won some big matches, but also struggled in areas. Overall, however, Huebsch said it was a good start, and if his team continues to grow from it, then the Skylights accomplished what they set out to do on their season-opening trip.

“We will take away a lot from this weekend,” Huebsch said. “I thought we learned a lot about what our strengths are, our serve-receive was really good all weekend. And I thought we found out exactly what we need to work on. We need to be a team that learns to finish games. A team that is willing to compete for those last few points in each game. We need our blocking to get better going forward, and we just need to be a more consistent team throughout each match. So we definitely learned a lot about ourselves this weekend.”

The Skylights, who won the 2013 Frontier Conference regular season championship, started the tournament with a tough match against a much-improved Evergreen State squad Thursday afternoon. Northern fell in that match in three very close sets, 26-24, 25-23 and 25-22, but the Skylights bounced right back and defeated Walla Walla University by scores of 25-9, 25-18 and 25-22. The dominating win was one in which Huebsch was very pleased as he saw his team quickly improve.

“Evergreen State is very solid, they have a really nice team,” Huebsch said. “But we lost those three sets by a total of seven points, and that was a result of just too many hitting and blocking errors at critical times. But I thought the girls did a really nice job of coming back and cleaning those things up against Walla Walla. It was nice to see them respond so quickly. So I thought we really learned a lot about ourselves on that first day of the tournament.”

Friday, Northern faced two difficult Cascade Conference opponents, and again, the Skylights earned a split. Against Northwest University, Northern pulled off a come-from-behind, five-set victory, one that showed MSU-N is capable of playing in a close, tough match. After losing the first set against Northwest, 25-12, the Skylights rebounded with a 25-16 win, but they fell behind 2-1 after losing the third set 25-21. Facing a must-win fourth set, MSU-N rallied and won 25-14, and in the decisive fifth set, the Skylights pulled off a hard-fought 15-13 victory.

Later Friday, MSU-N lost a heartbreaker to No. 23 Eastern Oregon. Although Northern lost by scores of 25-21, 25-23 and 25-21, the Skylights had significant leads in each set, only to watch the high-powered Mountaineers go on long scoring runs in each.

“The Northwest match showed me a lot about our team,” Huebsch said. The girls really responded each time they were down, and in the fourth and fifth sets, they played some very good volleyball. So it was really nice to see that we are capable of answering some adversity this early in the season, and that win will do a lot for us down the road.

“Against Eastern Oregon, I would say we played really well for parts of each set,” he continued, “but that was also a match that should have gone much differently. Again, it was just too much inconsistency and not finishing off sets when we had those opportunities. Eastern Oregon is a very good team, but honestly, we played really well against them for the most part. We just didn’t finish when we needed to.”

Northern closed out its trip to Spokane with a four-set victory over Simpson University of California Saturday afternoon. The Skylights won their final match by scores of 23-25, 25-16, 25-15 and 25-6. It was a dominant performance and a good way for MSU-N to finish its first weekend of regular season competition.

And after one week of the 2014 season in the books, Huebsch now knows a lot more about his young team, and says the Skylights will take everything they learned in Spokane and go forward from here.

“It was kind of what I expected this weekend,” Huebsch said. “At times we played really well, and at times we were just too inconsistent. Being such a young team, and a new team still learning to play together, it’s going to be like that sometimes. But overall, it was a good weekend for us. There are a lot of positives we can take away from this tournament, and we learned a lot of things we need to work on. So that’s what we’re going to do, just work on getting better and get ready for our trip to Nebraska.”

The Skylights travel to Bellevue, Nebraska, for a tough tournament this weekend. MSU-N plays four matches in Bellevue Friday and Saturday, including three against nationally ranked NAIA opponents. The Skylights play their first home match Sept. 19 against the Rocky Mountain College Battlin' Bears at the Armory Gymnasium.