GREAT FALLS, Mont. - Each set got a little bit harder for Lady Argo volleyball, and late in the third set the match started to look too similar to UP's 3-2 loss to the University of Montana Western earlier in the year, but senior Mariah Diaz led the Lady Argos to a 3-0 (25-12, 25-22, 27-25) win over the Bulldogs.
 
When the two teams played earlier in the year, UP dominated Western early but lost control late in the third and eventually blew a two-set lead. Diaz didn't play in the match, and her presence made the difference.
 
"The first time we played them, I wasn't able to play. This time I knew I was coming out and I knew I had to play strong," Diaz said. "We just had a mindset that we were going to get this done and we were going to win it in three. We definitely stuck with that goal. It felt phenomenal."
 
A patient and  efficient  game plan had the Lady Argos dominating in the first set after a slow start. UP used a 5-0 run to flip the score from 7-5 in favor of the Bulldogs to a 10-7 Lady Argo lead. Of those 5 points, 3 came from either a Western hitting error or a Western ball handling error.
 
That was an accurate representation of the team's overall strategy of keeping the ball alive, taking accurate but  low risk  attacks, and waiting for the other team to make the mistake. UP's defense was excellent in the set, making it almost impossible for the Bulldogs to score points of their own.
 
Western managed just 4 kills in the set while committing 6 errors in 28 attempts. Their -0.071 hitting percentage was in stark contrast to the 0.321 percentage UP hit. The Lady Argos had 13 kills and 4 errors on the way to a 25-12 first set victory.
 
Junior right side hitter Melissa Gonzalez was on fire in the first game, hitting 5 of the team's 13 kills.
 
Another big early run had the Lady Argos well ahead in the second set as well. UP went on a staggering 8-0 run where half of the points came from Bulldog attacking errors. The run had the Lady Argos ahead 10-5, but Western's defense tightened up a bit after that and the Lady Argos started to get impatient.
 
As kills became hard to come by, UP ratcheted up the hitting power. While that meant the team's kills numbers stayed high, it also increased the team's mistakes. The Lady Argos committed 9 hitting errors in the set which saw the team fall behind the Bulldogs 22-21.
 
With the threat of a 1-1 score seemingly imminent, UP came up big. A service error on Western tied the score at 22 all and then the Lady Argos rallied off 3 straight kills, with the last being a set winning effort from Diaz.
 
"Against a team like Western, if you make a lot of hitting errors and hit the ball to their libero quite a bit, then that's a team you're going to struggle against," UP Head Coach Arunas Duda said. "To their credit, they play great defense and they get the ball up a lot, but it was the same problem we had against them last time. We had 23 hitting errors in the match, and that was too many for us."
 
Those problems got worse in the third set. With 18 total kills, UP's offense was power to be sure, but it was also generous with points the other way, committing 10 hitting errors. In the meantime, Western had its best offensive set of the match with 10 kills and a hitting percentage of .226.
 
While hitters such as Gonzalez who had stayed relatively free of errors earlier in the match, struggled to find the court, Diaz became the go-to hitter. Heading into the set, the senior had 4 kills in the match. She more than doubled it in the third, getting 6 kills without any errors and added a block assist.
 
With the score again tied at 22-22, Diaz got her tenth and final kill of the match to give UP a 1 point lead and what seemed like some momentum but Western scored the next 2 points and held set point. A kill from senior middle blocker Josee Pendleton tied the score back up, but once again Western answered.
 
The set finally turned the Lady Argo's way with 2 big kills from freshman hitter Sydney Andersen. Another kill, this time from redshirt-freshman outside hitter Lauren Brown ended the set and the match.
 
Diaz ended up leading the team offensively with a  team high  10 kills and defensively with a  team high  4 block assists. Andersen and Gonzalez were next on the kills list with 8 each.
 
Freshman setter Ava Larkin had a versatile night, leading the team with 16 assists, despite three different setters getting significant time on the floor while adding 6 digs and a  team leading  4 aces.
 
Defensively, sophomore libero Brooke Foth had 12 digs, matching Western's star libero Dylan Fowler. Foth now has eight straight matches with 10 or more digs.
 
The win inches the Lady Argos back towards .500 in Frontier Conference play with a record of 16-8 (3-4). Next will be (21) Rocky Mountain College at home on Saturday, October 21 at 6:00 p.m.