.png&type=webp)
Bowling Green State University Athletics
Bowling Green State University
14-14, 10-6MAC
Buffalo
18-11, 6-10MAC
Falcons Earn No. 4 Seed For MAC Tournament
November 16, 2013 | Volleyball
Boxscore
MAC Tournament Bracket (.pdf)
Buffalo, N.Y. – The Bowling Green State University volleyball team closed out Mid-American Conference regular season play with a hard-fought five-set loss to Buffalo Saturday evening, but the Falcons earned the No. 4 seed for the eight-team MAC Tournament beginning Friday. Buffalo won the match 25-20, 22-25, 25-21, 26-28, 15-13.
The Falcons went 10-6 in conference play and 14-14 overall, finishing the year tied for fourth with Northern Illinois. Bowling Green, though, won the tiebreak due to a sweep of the Huskies earlier this year. The two teams will square off, however, in the first round of the conference tournament Friday at 2 p.m. at SPIRE Institute in Geneva, Ohio. The contest will also be a rematch of last year's MAC Championship, when Bowling Green beat Northern Illinois in five sets to earn a trip to the NCAA Tournament.
Saturday night, Buffalo held Senior Night and was playing for an opportunity to get into the MAC Tournament with a win. The Bulls, though, did not get the help they needed around the conference and are outside of the top eight for the upcoming weekend.
The Falcons hit just .104 for the match as Buffalo recorded 20.0 blocks to overcome Bowling Green's 79-65 edge in digs. Paige Penrod had a team-high 16 kills and added 15 digs. Danielle Tonyan and Kelsey Bates added 13 kills each. For Bates, that total represents a career-high and she also had just two attack errors to hit .367 for the match. Ashley Dunn had 20 digs, her sixth straight match with at least that total and her third in a row with exactly that amount. Kaitlyn Skinner, who ranks among the top 20 in the country in blocks, recorded seven more rejections in the five set match.
After the two teams split the first four sets, Buffalo scored the first three points of the fifth and never trailed. Jelena Sunjic did get the Falcons back on even ground with a kill to tie the score at 12-12, but Buffalo got a Megan Lipski kill and a block for the 14-12 lead. After a BGSU timeout and a service error by the Bulls, Buffalo closed out the match with a Dana Musil kill.
In looking at the MAC Tournament bracket, No. 1 seed Ohio will face No. 8 seed Kent State Friday at noon to kick off the event. The BGSU/Northern Illinois match will follow and the winners will play Saturday at 2:30 pm. On the other side of the bracket, No. 2 seed Toledo plays No. 7 Eastern Michigan at 5 pm, followed by No. 3 Ball State against No. 6 Western Michigan at 7 pm. Those winners will play Saturday at 5 pm. The championship match will be played Sunday at 1 pm with the winner earning the league's automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.
