Oct. 26, 2013

Box Score | Photo Gallery

ROCHESTER, Mich. - Cassie Pelloni swung for 10 kills as Oakland (10-14, 4-5 HL) earned an unfortunate home loss against the league leader, Milwaukee (13-8, 9-0 HL) on Saturday afternoon in the Athletics Center O'rena. The set scores for the match were 25-20, 25-21 and 25-16.

"Right now they (Milwaukee) are playing extremely well," said head coach, Rob Beam. "I thought they put out a great effort and we have to learn some lessons from tonight and implement them in practice on Monday. We have to watch our film tonight and try to note some differences between our performance today and our performance from last night, which I thought was really good. We're going to improve from that and get back after at it."

Alli Gutschow contributed a strong serving effort as she would record three service aces for the contest. The Golden Grizzlies did not rise to the occasion overall though in this important home match and only hit .180 compared to Milwaukee's .409. Oakland's best set was the second with a .382 hitting percentage, but it was not enough to fight off the Panthers, who also earned their best offensive set of the match and hit .500.

In the early goings of the first set, Oakland showed lots of offensive life and was tied with Milwaukee at 6-6 before the Panthers took off on a run and led 14-9. The Grizzlies tied the score again at 15-15 but could not take the advantage and dropped the set 25-20. In the second set, OU held leads at 7-5, 8-7 and 9-8 but could not keep the offensive juices flowing. Milwaukee kept rolling to the 25-21 set victory and the 2-0 lead in the match.

The Grizzlies entered a do-or-die set three with less than the needed effort allowing Milwaukee three unanswered points off the get go to set the tone. Oakland came back to tie the match at 7-7 off of an impressive offensive series from Amanda Baker including a kill, a block and a block assist, but the home team did not take the lead. The very next possession, the Panthers put a kill to the floor and proceeded to take the set 25-16 for the win in three straight sets.

Oakland hits the road next week en route to Ohio for two matches. The Grizzlies battle Cleveland State on Nov. 1 at 7 p.m. and Youngstown State on Nov. 2 at 4 p.m.

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