BILLINGS, Mont. – Riding the momentum of splitting the games against the Alaska schools last week, the Montana State University Billings volleyball team will hit the road to play three games in five days, starting with Rocky Mountain College this Tuesday at 7 p.m.

After finishing the Rimrock Rivalry series in the Fortin Center on Tuesday, the 'Jackets resume Great Northwest Athletic Conference play by facing Saint Martin's on Thursday, then Western Oregon this Saturday. Both GNAC games are scheduled for 8 p.m. MT.
 
Despite the physical and logistical challenges of playing three games in five days, this week not only gives MSUB opportunities for its first road win of the season, but also a chance of going 3-0, as the 'Jackets have previously beaten all three teams this season.
 
"All of the teams we play this week are up-and-down teams but have the ability to get hot at any time, so we need to make sure to keep our composure," MSUB head coach Casey Williams said. "Composure is one of the words we've been focusing on this week because we don't want to be one of those teams that's just riding the wave of the ups and downs of the season. We can have a great week, but none of the teams are going to hand it to us."
 
"We have a really good chance of out-working some teams and coming out of the strong side of the week, but it is also going to be a grind," Williams added.
 
In order to do this, the Yellowjackets' first test will be trying to keep composure in front of the most hostile crowd they'll play in front of all season: Rocky.
 
Although MSUB beat its crosstown rivals convincingly back on Oct. 5, MSUB will look a little different to the Battlin' Bears this time around. MSUB's middle blockers have had more of a hand in the 'Jacket offense; over the past month, either Joelle Mahowald, Hannah Hayden, or freshman Mikayla Yore (or a combination of the three) have come through with one of their best games of the season.
 
"I think during our first go through the GNAC season, we were super pin-heavy as a team," Williams said. "Part of it was the numbers that our outsides and opposites put up, but I think that does bode well for us going into the second half of conference play. Some defensive schemes are going to sit on our pin hitters and attackers, but Hannah Hayden and Joelle Mahowald and Mikayla Yore have done a great job making themselves available, working in transition and converting those balls that are given to them."
 
Few players on MSUB's roster have blossomed on offense quite like Hannah Hayden, who has become a more well-rounded middle blocker this season. Over the span of the past month, the sophomore set season-highs with six kills twice, then tied her career high with seven against Alaska Anchorage – including four in the first set alone – last Saturday.
 
"It feels really good to be able to help my team more than just defensively," Hayden said. "I always struggled with being just a defensive pin. I've worked on my hitting, but when I was a freshman, I didn't really have the arm swing for it. Coach Casey and Coach Morgan [Walters] really helped me; we did a lot of extra work and they know exactly what to say to me."
 
Williams says the team is confident in Hayden's abilities, and that setter Hannah Hashbarger has made a point of giving more opportunities to Hayden and the rest of the middles. So far, Hayden has made the most of them.
 
"Hannah Hayden is one of those girls where we just let her loose and let her do her own thing," Williams said. "She's composed, she brings great energy and she has a really calming presence on the court the entire time – no matter what the situation is. She's grown so much, not only in the physical side of play, but also the mental and leadership side of volleyball."
 
Throughout this week, Hayden will face off against teams she's found success against so far. Hayden had a season-best six kills on a career-high .385 hitting percentage against Saint Martin's earlier this year; against Western Oregon, she had six block assists and helped the Wolves hit only .119 against the 'Jackets.
 
"I'm excited to see how those teams react," Hayden said. "I think most teams are just thinking they need to block our pin-hitters, but Joelle and I have shown we can do it. I feel like it'll make them really confused and I'm excited to hear them say 'stay on number 13' instead of just trying to block our pins. The other teams have never fully seen us yet; they don't know what we're going to do to them."
 
LAST TIME OUT
 
ROCKY MOUNTAIN COLLEGE
Record: 10-14 (2-5 Frontier Conference)
The Battlin' Bears have been in a freefall since the first Rimrock Rivalry game on Oct. 5., as they've been swept by three Frontier Conference opponents. Should the 'Jackets sweep Rocky Mountain on Tuesday, that will mark the first time since 2004 that MSUB didn't give up a set to their crosstown rivals.  
 
The first Rimrock Rivalry meeting between the two teams was all MSUB. The 'Jackets cruised to a 3-0 (25-13, 25-15, 25-13) win and only trailed once during the early moments of set two. Everything was clicking for MSUB: The team hit .291 overall, dropped in five service aces and registered five blocks to Rocky's two. Skylar Reed had another strong Rimrock Rivalry performance, leading the team with 12 kills on .478 hitting; whereas Bayli Monck and Joelle Mahowald chipped in 10 and 9 kills, respectively.
 
SAINT MARTIN'S
Record: 9-11 (2-8 GNAC)
The Saints are having their best season, period. Saint Martin's welcomes MSUB to town after beating Linfield College and Western Oregon for its eighth and ninth wins of the season, which is the most wins the program has ever had in a single season.
 
Last time MSUB played Saint Martin's on Oct. 2, the Yellowjackets sprinted out to a 13-2 run to open the first set and never looked back in a 3-0 (25-12, 25-23, 25-23) sweep. Offensively, MSUB had its most efficient hitting night of the season, Hannah Hayden and Joelle Mahowald read the Saints' hitters well, helping the Yellowjackets out-block the Saints by an 11-2 margin. The former had arguably her best all-around showing of the season at that point with a six kill, four-block outing – the latter outnumbered Saint Martin's total blocks as a team.
 
WESTERN OREGON
Record: 2-15 (0-10 GNAC)
The Wolves have won one set in the month of October and will be searching for their first GNAC win unless they upset Seattle Pacific this Thursday. Meanwhile, MSUB will look for its first win in Monmouth since Nov. 15, 2014.
 
During the two teams' first meeting on Oct. 30, the Western Oregon Wolves took a 2-1 lead before they ran out of gas in sets four and five. MSUB's offense rolled late, hitting .688 in the fifth set thanks to a 21-kill night from Monck, 14 from Mahowald and 13 from Reed. The trio also accounted for eight of the team's nine service aces. All told, nine different players earned kills for the 'Jackets to shake off the plucky Wolves.
 
ABOUT LAST WEEK

After trailing two sets to one against Alaska last Thursday, MSUB played its best volleyball down the stretch and stunned the Nanooks for the five-set win – arguably the team's biggest victory of the year.
 
"It was a little bit of a high and a low," Williams said of the Alaska game. "We didn't have the greatest start and we didn't have the best mindset, but we finished off the game being aggressive, which was our gameplan the whole time – it just took a little bit of time to find it. I'm optimistic that we've learned a lesson from that game and that we're going to start strong and play aggressive throughout the entirety of all three matches this week."
 
Hayden agreed with her coach about the first two sets, and mentioned that once MSUB saw Alaska lose its composure, they had the Nanooks right where they wanted them.
 
"The first two sets didn't go the way that we wanted them to, but you could kind of feel that Fairbanks thought they had won the game already," Hayden said. "Before we went out for the third set, we came together and said that this was a game we weren't supposed to win, but we can change that. We started working together as a team. We were putting pressure on them and they started to fold. Then it was on us to keep the pressure on them, be louder and more energetic. Once we shut down their setter and saw their team get frustrated, then we started clicking."
 
Hayden capped off set three for the 'Jackets with a block, then a kill to clinch the 25-17 win, before MSUB won the fourth with a big 25-14 win. The fifth set was close, but the 'Jackets went on a 6-0 run midway through the set that ended up being the haymaker.
 
"It was so nice to keep a server back there and watch Alaska make the errors," Hayden said. "We did a great job of putting pressure on the block. Our defense was phenomenal – they couldn't do anything about it – and our serving was getting them out of system."
 
Riding the high of upsetting Alaska two days before, MSUB couldn't pull off the upset against then-24^th-ranked Alaska Anchorage. The Yellowjackets played the Seawolves close in the first two sets – and even clawed back from a 10-2 deficit in the third set – but it resulted in a 3-0 (18-25, 25-27, 19-25) loss.
 
"We never really settled in," Williams said. "We were waiting for a big kill or a big block or something to get us started. When that didn't happen, we lost focus and composure."
 
STAT CORNER

• Bayli Monck is sitting at 1,140 career kills and needs 17 to surpass Ashlynn Ward for seventh all-time at MSUB. Monck could also leapfrog Jennifer Boe, who ranks sixth with 1,177 kills, if she gets 38 kills this week.
• Speaking of program records, sophomore setter Hannah Hashbarger needs 57 assists to move into MSUB's top-five career assists leaders. She has 1,793 entering this week; fifth-place is Hillary Morrison with 1,849 assists.
• Joelle Mahowald is eight solo blocks away from entering MSUB's top-10 career leaders for that statistical category. Mahowald, who played her first two years at Spokane Falls Community College, has 47 solo blocks as a Yellowjacket.

 
UP NEXT: Game two of the Rimrock Rivalry will be at Rocky Mountain College's Fortin Center on Tuesday at 7 p.m. The game will be livestreamed on Rocky Mountain College's Battlin' Bears All-Access website. Livestream and live stat links for all other games can be found at the women's volleyball schedule page on msubsports.com.