Great Falls, Mont. – The University of Providence women's volleyball team looks to build upon the season's biggest victory last weekend when they take on Lewis and Clark State on Saturday at 2 p.m. in the McLaughlin Center.

The Argos (5-2, 17-5) have been looking for a win over a heavyweight team all season. They had the opportunity in Iowa against 12^th ranked Grandview, but ultimately couldn't finish.

"We really felt like we let an opportunity slip out of our hands," head coach Arunas Duda said. "It was a well-fought match against Grandview. We lost 16-14 in the 5^th and had an opportunity to win the set. We were up 14-13. We felt like we let one get away from us."

The loss didn't sit well with the captains, who returned to Great Falls with a motivated mindset.

"I thought they did a really nice job of stepping up and holding the team together and saying 'We need to fix some things. We need to improve in these areas and we're going to hold you to it in practice.'" Duda said. "I thought their response was great and the rest of the team fell right in line with that. Sometimes a loss helps you refocus and that's kind of what happened in practice last week. We were now determined that we were going to down to Tech and play extremely well and I felt like we did that."

Despite the freshly-motivated players, Duda was unsure what to expect against the Orediggers. The team had lost to the Orediggers earlier in the season, and he knew the Orediggers were chasing the top seed in the Frontier Conference. A win would propel Montana Tech to a tie for first place, and more-importantly, giving them the a two-game lead over the Argos.

 "I knew it would be a really tough matchup," he said. "I felt going down there, you never know how we're going to respond. I just know that we are going to get the girls best effort every night. How would we respond to a tough adverse situation? We were tied down the stretch. In the first half of conference when we were tied down the stretch, we let some of those games slip away. I think they determined after that Iowa trip that they would not let that happen again. So that was really cool to see their response. In the first set, we were tied at 26 and we were able to pull that off on some really nice plays. After that we fell into a groove and we blocked much better, we defended really well, and we were able to side out efficiently."

The Argos defeated the Orediggers in 4 sets, keeping them alive in the hunt for a Frontier Conference regular season championship. The Argos are currently second place in the conference with a record of 5-2. They trail Rocky Mountain College, who is undefeated in conference play. They have a one game lead on both Montana Tech (4-2) and Lewis and Clark State (4-2), the Argos next opponent.

The Argos have already defeated Lewis and Clark State earlier this year in straight sets, two days after their initial loss to Montana Tech. However, the Warriors have played well since. What's even more concerning to Duda is the fact that they haven't played in two weeks, giving them time to properly prepare for the Argos.

"Their changing their offense up a little bit," Duda said. "You never know what they've switched and changed in order to prepare for this matchup. I anticipate pretty similar structure but maybe a few different variables here and there. It's kind of tough to prepare for them when you haven't seen them but we've worked on a lot of different scenarios in practice. Hopefully we'll be ready."

Duda is hoping the determination that led the team to the Montana Tech victory will show up again Saturday afternoon. With so few games remaining on the schedule, every game matters.

"I think their all big from here on out," he said. "Every match is important from here on out and we're not taking any of them lightly."

"We're looking forward to this weekend," he said. "I'm glad there's so many teams here. We're going to try and support each other and make it an Argo sweep for all our sports."