Sept. 1, 2007

Box Score

PEORIA, Ill. - Saint Louis overcame its poorest offensive performance of the season, rallying from a two-game deficit to defeat Montana 29-31,19-30,30-24,30-26,15-11 on day two of the Radisson Hotel Invitational in Peoria, Ill. The Billikens (4-1) wrap up the tournament with a 5 p.m. match against Western Illinois. Montana falls to 2-3 overall.

"We were down 0-2 and we came back to win it. I couldn't be more proud of how our players handled themselves in this pressure situation," SLU head coach Anne Kordes said. "I've got to give a lot of credit to our passing. Whitney Behrens, Chrissy King, Megan Boken and Emily Galbraith were fantastic. They are the reason we stayed in that match. Our hitting was a little off in the beginning, and our passing helped us remain competitive in those last three games."

SLU out-hit the Grizzlies .150 to .073 in game one and led throughout most of the game but still came up a bit short. The two teams knotted the game at points 26-29 but a kill by Montana's Jade Roskam and a Billiken hitting error gave the Grizzlies the 31-29 win.

Montana followed their victory up with a second one in game two after putting together its best offensive game of the match (.417) for a 30-19 victory. The Billikens, meanwhile, had 13 errors in the game for a -.051 hitting percentage. UM led most of the way, gaining their largest lead in the final score. Montana once again out-hit the Billikens in game three and led briefly at the start, but SLU tied it at 6-6 and then took the lead for good to come out on top 30-24.

Saint Louis led the majority of game four despite being out-manned offensively .229 to .170. The Grizzlies evened things up at 23-23. However, Boken came through with a pair of kills for the Bills, who never relinquished the lead to force a fifth game.

The Bills saved their best offensive output for the final game even though they trailed the Grizzlies until tying things up at 10-10. Lauren Christman recorded a kill while Bridget Fonke added a pair sandwiched around a couple UM hitting errors for the 15-11 game and match victory. The Billikens collected nine kills against no errors for a .429 hitting percentage while Montana hit at a .167 clip.

Fonke led the Bills with a match and career-high 28 kills, while Sutton Lasater followed with a season-high 13. Three players recorded double-digit dig efforts, including Behrens (20), Boken (career-high 14) and Whitney Roth (10). Roth was the lone Billiken to turn in a double-double with a season-best 63 assists.