Searching for its first NCAA Tournament win in eight tries, the University of Northern Colorado volleyball team took a dominant Creighton team to five sets before losing Thursday night in a first-round match in Omaha, Nebraska.
UNC, 17-16, bounced back from a bad first set to take a 2-1 set lead with back-to-back 25-23 wins at Creighton’s D.J. Sokol Arena.
The nationally ranked No. 11 Bluejays, a third seed in the 64-team tournament, won the first set 25-12, the fourth 25-17 and 15-8 in the fifth.
Creighton (26-5) advances to the second round Friday evening against the University of Northern Iowa. UNI beat Utah in five sets in the other first-round match Thursday at Creighton.
“Give them credit,” Creighton coach Brian Rosen said of UNC in a post-match interview on ESPN+. “We played great in the first set (a match-best .438 hitting percentage) and the serve was the difference. Then, they picked the service pressure and their defense was special tonight. They kept getting balls up.”
UNC had 73 digs as a team, led by setter Nerea Alvarez-Jorge with 17, Brynn Reines with 13, and defensive specialists Bella LePore and GA McCarter with 12 and 11, respectively.
The Bears, unseeded for the tournament, opened the match with a .000 hitting percentage in the first set. UNC turned things around, getting up to .216 and .205 in the second and third sets while outhitting Creighton.
UNC reached the NCAA Tournament by winning the Big Sky Conference Tournament last week on its home court in Greeley.
UNC athletics assistant director of strategic communications Elian Soto said the match marks the first time a Big Sky Conference school has taken an opponent to five sets in the NCAA Tournament dating to 2001.
Creighton improved its play in the fourth and fifth sets. The Bluejays had a .313 hitting percentage in the fourth set, and they raced out to a 5-1 lead in the fifth. The team relied more in the fifth set on outside hitter Ava Martin, who was the Big East Conference player of the year and the conference tournament MVP.
Martin had eight kills in the fifth and finished with a match-high 30 kills on 65 total attacks for a .369 hitting percentage. Martin’s kill total was more than twice any other UNC player. Alayna Tessena led the Bears attack with 14 kills. Reines added 11 kills with a team-high two service aces. Alvarez-Jorge had 36 assists.
Annalea Maeder had 21 digs for Creighton, which dominated UNC in blocks 29-4.
UNC outside hitter Bella Van Lannen and middle blocker Isabel Bennett both added nine kills in their final match for the Bears. Van Lannen, Bennett, Reines, McCarter, middle blocker Zoe Gibbs and setter Mia Liddiard are all seniors and were honored by UNC in the final match of the regular season.
UNC returned to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2022 and fourth time since 2019.
Three years ago, the Bears lost in four sets to the University of San Diego. In 2021, Washington State beat UNC in three sets. UNC went to Hawaii in 2019 and lost in four sets.