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GREAT FALLS, Mont. – Lady Argo volleyball is looking for a bounce-back weekend at home after a rough start to Frontier Conference play. UP went 0-2 to start the conference season, including a heartbreaking 3-2 loss to Montana Western and a 3-0 dud against (RV) Rocky Mountain College. The team will try to recover from those two losses starting with home matches against Montana State University-Northern and Carroll College.

MSU-Northern will be UP's first opponent of the weekend, with the contest set for Thursday, September 21 at 7 p.m. The two teams were right next to each other in the conference standings in 2016, and the Skylights got the best of the Lady Argos in both regular season meetings. UP got the last laugh, however, beating MSUN 3-1 in the quarterfinals of the Frontier Conference Tournament.

The two teams are coming off of strikingly similar weekends. Both teams played Rocky and Western to start conference play, though in reverse order. Just like UP, Northern got swept by Rocky 3-0 and went five sets against Western. The difference was that the Skylights pulled out the win in Dillon, taking the tiebreaker set 15-7 over the Bulldogs.
A crucial battle in the match will be UP's blocking against MSUN's Cassie Krueger. Northern's senior outside hitter currently sits second in the conference in kills/set with 3.3. She and sophomore Timi Severson have combined for over half the team's total kills.

On the other side of the net, UP's stellar blocking duo of senior Josee Pendleton and freshman Kailey Rashford will be waiting. The two are second and third in the conference and 31st and 33rd nationally in blocks/game. Pendleton is the slightly higher ranked at 1.1 bpg, while Rashford is just behind at 1.09. Their efforts have the Lady Argos ranked 6th as a team in the NAIA in the same statistical category.

Following Northern will be defending conference champions Carrol College on Saturday, September 23 at 2 p.m. The Fighting Saints have already dropped a conference match, losing 3-2 to (17) Montana Tech, but are still a dangerous team. The Lady Argos went 1-2 against Carroll in 2016, getting swept in Helena in the regular season, beating the Saints at home 3-2, and then falling to the eventual conference champs 3-1 in the Frontier Conference Semifinals.

This match will be strength against strength as the best element of Carroll's game is also its net defense. Led by Brielle Bumgarner, who ranks 16th in the NAIA with 1.23 bpg, the Fighting Saints ranked 11th as a team with 2.44 bps. That could spell trouble for the Lady Argos who have been struggling to hit efficiently over the past few matches.

The bright spot for the Lady Argos in recent contests has been an improved effort from the team's deep but previously inconsistent back row. Against Western, the team had 119 digs the program's highest total since October 2015, and sophomore defensive specialists Brooke Foth and Emily Stoker each set career highs.

UP will look to take that improved defense and combine with the kind of hitting that had the team 13-3 and receiving votes in the Top-25 poll at the end of non-conference play but has since gone missing to try and get back on track in the conference standings.