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St. Thomas stuns Cobbers, 3-0, advances to nationals
The St. Thomas volleyball team has been bucking the odds all season, so why not one more time?
The 11th-ranked Tommies zoomed to a 3-0 win at Concordia-Moorhead on Sunday afternoon to punch their ticket to next weekend's national tournament in St. Louis.
UST won 25-18, 25-18, 25-19. They ended the Cobbers' win streak at 15 and won for the 19th time in their last 20 matches.
It's the second consecutive region championship for Coach Thanh Pham's Tommies. UST had lost all six previous region final matches in school history before breaking through in 2010.
It's also the second year in a row that the Tommies lost in the MIAC playoff finals and avenged that defeat eight days later in the NCAA region final.
St. Thomas (32-4) will open the NCAA tournament Friday with a quarterfinal match against Eastern, which beat perennial power Juniata in its region final, 3-1.
The Tommies have four first-year starters on the court, including two freshman and a senior setter. They continued to improve all season and have stepped up to meet the challenge in the postseason. They needed a dramatic rally in Saturday's semifinals as they won the fourth and fifth games to escape St. Scholastica, 3-2.
On Sunday, facing a packed house of primarily Cobber fans, UST tried to win on a court where they were 0-2 already this season and Concordia was 20-1 over the last two seasons.
UST hit .229 on the day and applied pressure on Concordia from the start. The Tommies' balance never let the potent Cobbers get untracked.
Freshman Kelly Foley had 14 kills and hit .545 on the match to lead the victory. Freshman Jill Greenfield recorded nine kills, three aces and 12 digs; senior setter Ashley Maher had 33 assists and eight digs.
In 11 games over the weekend, Foley had 37 kills and hit .365, while Greenfield had 38 kills and 47 digs.
