Huskies fall at LSSU, Will be No. 4 seed in GLIAC Tournament

SAULT STE. MARIE, Mich. – The Michigan Tech volleyball team fell 3-2 at Lake Superior State in the regular season finale on Saturday (Nov. 11). The Lakers won the first set, and the teams traded sets from there with the home team winning 15-8 in the fifth.

Tech clinched the No. 4 seed in the GLIAC Tournament and will host fifth-seeded Northern Michigan on Wednesday in a quarterfinal matchup. With the win, LSSU also got into the postseason as the No. 8 seed and will travel to top-seed Grand Valley State.

"This weekend pretty well encapsulated this whole season," Tech coach Matt Jennings said. "We reverse sweep a nationally-ranked team on the road and come out and drop the ball against a team fighting to make the conference tournament. Credit to Coach Zach and his team. They played very well and scored a ton of points against us. We could not stop them when we needed to and came out sluggish for reasons, I'm not sure of."

LSSU led for most of the first set and out-killed the Huskies 17-11 in a 25-19 win. Five different Lakers had at least a pair of kills. Meg Raabe had five kills for Tech.

The Huskies tied it up in the second 25-23. Tech never trailed and got six kills from Raabe and four from Lindy Oujiri.

The Lakers built an eight-point lead in the third. The Huskies held of three setpoints before Emilee McDaniel finally put it away for a 25-22 win for the home team. Raabe and Oujiri combined for 13 kills.

The Black and Gold forced a fifth set after forcing the Lakers into 10 errors with five blocks. LSSU had five straight attacking errors early in the set and Lindy Oujiri put down the final two points for a 25-18 tech win.

There were three early ties in the fifth set before the Lakers separated with a 4-0 run and then closed on a 6-1 run to take the win.

Meg Raabe tallied a match-high 26 kills and added 13 digs and five block assists. Lindy Oujiri added 15 kills while Kaycee Meiners notched six kills, eight block assists, and three solo blocks.

Tess Hayes set the attack with 50 assists and added 12 digs. Amelia Albers (19), Alayna Corwin (16), and Brooke Dzwik (14) also had double-digit digs.

Other first-round GLIAC matchups are No. 7 Purdue Northwest at No. 2 Ferris State and No. 6 Davenport at No. 3 Parkside. Tickets for Wednesday's match will go on sale at noon on Monday.