Northern Michigan’s volleyball team will host a GLIAC Tournament quarterfinal Wednesday after a dramatic regular-season finish vaulted the Wildcats into the No. 3 seed.

NMU (13-14, 9-7 Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference) takes on No. 6 Saginaw Valley State (17-11, 9-7 GLIAC) at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 11, at Vandament Arena, according to NMU’s tournament preview and the Mining Journal.

Four teams finished 9-7 in conference play: NMU, Saginaw Valley State, Davenport and Michigan Tech. The Wildcats won the tiebreaker with a 4-1 record in matches among those four teams, according to NMU. Northern will open the conference tournament at home for the third consecutive season.

The stakes were steep. Had NMU lost its regular-season finale at Parkside on Nov. 6, the Wildcats would have fallen to 8-8 in conference and into a three-way tie for sixth place with Parkside and Wayne State, according to the Mining Journal. That scenario could have dropped NMU to the No. 8 seed and a first-round trip to undefeated Ferris State.

Instead, NMU forced a deciding set with a 25-22 fourth-set victory in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Trailing 14-11 in the fifth, the Wildcats survived three match points and eventually won 17-15, completing a 3-2 victory.

“Tremendously proud of this team tonight! … Our block and defense did their job and gave us the opportunity to run our offense at a high level,” associate head coach Kamryn Duffield said in an NMU sports information release quoted by the Mining Journal after the Parkside win.

The victory included 20 kills from Kaylie McIntosh, 13 from KC Fortune and 12 from freshman Anna O’Keefe.

Senior setter Allie Barlow finished with 48 assists in the match. Barlow has 1,016 assists this season, third in the GLIAC in total assists, and leads the conference with 50 service aces, according to conference statistics. She surpassed 3,000 career assists earlier this season, becoming the eighth player in program history to reach that milestone, according to NMU.

Barlow was named GLIAC Setter of the Week twice this season. Her 0.48 aces per set ranks second in the conference, and NMU’s preview places both figures among the top-50 marks nationally.

McIntosh’s team-leading 338 kills rank fifth in the conference in total kills. O’Keefe has 226 kills, Fortune has 223 and freshman Laynie Russell has 211. Russell also leads NMU with 62 blocks, according to the university’s preview.

Saginaw Valley State presents a challenge. The Cardinals beat NMU 3-1 in Marquette on Sept. 19, overcoming a 25-18 loss in the opening set. SVSU finished the regular season by getting swept in its final two matches, though both came against league frontrunners Ferris State and Grand Valley State.

Rachel Townsend’s 329 kills lead SVSU, averaging 3.26 per set. Marissa Roe has a conference-high 98 total blocks. As a team, the Cardinals rank second in the GLIAC with 1.98 blocks per set, according to conference statistics.

The rest of Wednesday’s GLIAC quarterfinal bracket: No. 8 Parkside at No. 1 Ferris State, No. 7 Wayne State at No. 2 Grand Valley State, and No. 5 Michigan Tech at No. 4 Davenport. Quarterfinal winners advance to the semifinals Friday, Nov. 13, and final Saturday, Nov. 14, hosted by the highest remaining seed, according to GLIAC’s championship schedule.

Wednesday’s match can be watched on FloSports and heard on 100.3 The Point, with Austin Graham on the call, according to NMU.