Parallel Volleyball Universes: Madison and Wauwatosa, NCAA and WIAA, Female and Male

Wow. We just finished live-streaming two incredible matches simultaneously: the NCAA D1 women's match between Wisconsin and Minnesota (which Minnesota won in a 19-17 fifth set) and the Nicolet-Racine Horlick WIAA state boys quarterfinal (which Nicolet won in five after coming back from a two-set deficit). 

At several points during both of the fifth sets, the score in Madison was virtually the same as the score in Wauwatosa. Wisconsin came back from a 14-12 deficit to tie the match on a couple of huge swings from Dolgner and DuPont, but came up just short in the final tally. Nicolet had two key moments in their fifth set, one on a big block by sophomore Matthew Klingspohn to increase the lead to 12-9 that was followed shortly by Anatoli Berezovky's burying of an overpass to make it 13-10. 

We know we're barely coherent here, but volleyball in this state is nothing short of incredible. Congrats to all of the Wisconsin teams that fought so hard tonight all over the state and elsewhere, including a very determined Racine Horlick team that came up just short.

We'll discuss other happenings in a little while (including UW-Oshkosh's four-set win over Heidelberg in the NCAA Division III tournament) but we just had to post this little ramble first.