UMD Volleyball comes in to Homecoming weekend with top ten ranking

DULUTH, MN. (Northern News Now) - The University of Minnesota Duluth Bulldogs remain #10 in the Division II American Volleyball Coaches Poll even though they picked up their first conference loss to Northern State University last Friday.

The team looks ahead to their homecoming weekend which brings two tough matchups.

First, the Augustana Vikings who just defeated the Minnesota State Mavericks for their first conference win of the season, will visit Romano Gym for their annual “Hall of Fame Match” at 5 p.m. on Friday.

Then it doesn’t get any easier as #1 ranked Wayne State will try to spoil Duluth’s homecoming, whose only loss came to #2 Concordia-St. Paul before they defeated them a week later.

According to the Bulldogs team, they will be focusing on three keys ahead of the two matchups, playing aggressively, embracing long rallies, and executing at a high level offensively.

“I think that’s the key for us to learn right now about ourselves is that we’ve got 6-7 matches where we’ve hit 300 or higher and we’ve got 4-5 matches where we are in the 160 range so if we could just find a happy medium somewhere in between I think we can be competitive throughout the rest of the season,” said head coach Jim Boos.

“We know that we are going to have to work really hard, especially against Wayne, again execution and defense. They don’t make errors. If they have an out-of-system ball they get it over the net and they wait for you to have an error, so for us to work on this week to limit our errors and focus on our side is going to be a huge deal this weekend,” said outside hitter Cianna Selbitschka.

The Bulldogs face Augustana on Friday at 5 p.m. before meeting #1 Wayne State at 4 p.m. on Saturday.

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