09/08/07

The Gustavus Tournament weekend will not be a trip the Saints want to embed in their memory banks.

With a 3-0 loss to St. Benedict to close out the trip, St. Scholastica but a period at the end of an o-for-4 weekend.

Against St. Benedict, the Saints fell behind early and never fully recovered after their 30-13 game one defeat. The air had been let out of the bubble long before that game.

But the Saints found their reserves, and resolve, battling back in game two before falling 30-26, and then again in game three before dropping the match with a 30-24 defeat.

Shawna Varichak totaled the most kills for the Saints in the four-loss weekend with 50, followed by Amy Thompson's 43 and Dustie Richardson's 32.

Setter Kati Berscheit averaged just under 10 assists per game, registering 135 assists for the tournament.

Erin Niles' 9.5 blocks led the Saints defensively over the four match stretch. Richardson added 7.0 blocks to the defensive efforts.

Errors proved to the team's downfall over the weekend.

Twice they finished matches with an equal number of attacking errors and kills resulting in a .000 attacking percentage. Defensively, they totaled 32 serve receive errors for an average of eight per match.

Next up for the Saints as they tug on their bootstraps will be the UWS/CSS Border Battle held on the UWS campus this Friday and at the Reif Center on the CSS campus on Saturday.