UND volleyball seniors are honored during last Saturday’s game at the Betty Engelstad Sioux Center. Photo by Chester Beltowski/The Dakota Student.

Last weekend marked the final home stand of the season for the UND women’s volleyball team.

North Dakota rolled over two teams — Montana and Montana State — that have been struggling to put anything together all season. Montana State came to Grand Forks having lost its previous meeting 3-0 with North Dakota back in early October.

Thursday’s meeting between UND and Montana State ended with the same score as the previous match as UND dominated the Bobcats 3-0. Senior Nikki Husfeldt also had a strong final weekend at home. As the current all-time assists leader at UND, was able to pass the 5,000 career assists mark in the first set of the match.

“It was nice to get some kids in and to see those kids be successful,” UND coach Mark Pryor said. “I think we showed flashes of how good we can be and some warning signs that we just need to maintain focus and not give up the big run. Keep grinding out wins — that’s kind of our identity.”

A victory over Montana State made North Dakota the second team out of nine to earn a spot in the Big Sky tournament that will take place at the end of the month.

Even though North Dakota has earned a spot in the tournament it will still need to battle out the remainder of the season to earn a high seed.

North Dakota was able to add to its chances of earning a high tournament seed after it notched its second conference victory of the weekend over Montana, giving the team a Big Sky record of 11-3 and the No. 2 spot in the Big Sky.

The women’s volleyball team continued to play disciplined ball as it recorded only six attacking errors Saturday night — a season low. North Dakota received help from some of its younger players as sophomore Anna Pioske and freshman Faith Dooley combined for 19 kills in Saturdays win.

Saturday night also brought the honoring of senior players Magda Zietek, Jessica Fontes, Lexi Robinson, Felicia Ulrich and Nikki Husfelt after they played their final matches of their career at the Betty Engelstad Sioux Center.

North Dakota hits the road this weekend and will look to continue to play disciplined volleyball for its final conference matches. Thursday night, UND will take on Idaho, a team currently holding on to the same conference record of 11-3.

Winning this matchup will be essential to North Dakota if it wants to earn a high seed. Idaho State looks to be the school that will hold on to the No. 1 spot as it has only lost one conference match all year and won 13.

The weekend will be a big test for North Dakota to see if it is ready to finish the season strong.

With the seeding of the conference tournament on the line, UND will take on Idaho on Thursday night and Eastern Washington on Saturday.

Ben Novak is a staff writer for The Dakota Student. He can be reached at [email protected].