Preseason, our Gophers were ranked #5 in the national VB Coaches Poll. Beating Baylor and TCU, both @ TCU, in week 1, bumped the Gophs to #4. Losing to #1 ranked Texas @ Texas, and beating Florida at the Pav, bumped us to #3. (Nebrasks, BTW, is #2, and the Badgers, losers to Baylor @ TCU, are #6.)
READERS WRITE
GOPHERVBROCKS reader, and passionate fan, R.A., was disappointed by the Gophers struggle with Florida: R.A. “I was so glad when I first saw your GopherVBallRocks headline (‘GOPHERS STRUGGLE’), I had put off commenting, thinking I was the only one disappointed.
After the Gophs did zip thru 2 sets, I believed we would lose 3-1. We had no offense for 2 1/2 sets. Wenaas and Landfair were non-factors. Shaffmaster provided the most offense. We were only 1-1 because FL kept giving us points. Thru the whole match, we got 47 points from FL errors (hitting, SE, RE and bad sets) vs. 46 points from our kills. Landfair was tentative nearly every time she touched the ball — until she came alive late-3rd, Wenaas also. They hit only.125 and .171 for the match, Landfair with 9 errors to her 14 kills.
McGraw helped with solid serves. 3 aces but consistent serves throughout, which kept FL out of system. Yay, CC! Kilkelly also served well, but needs to come right out after; she was the target of FL serves anytime she was in, and struggled in back court defense.
I hope Wenaas’s mile high toss, jump-serves accomplish something soon, as her 4 service errors hurt. Unless there’s a divine plan, I prefer how she served before. Oh, and 0 aces.
Booth was my biggest surprise. I regarded her as our best asset thru three matches, but she played little or none after Sunday’s 2nd set. Painful to watch. Lucky FL handed us the match.”
JOHN: The 2022 Gophers are a very good team, but not so good that they won’t get off their game, now and then, as they did to start Set 2 against Florida. They may have an entire off-night now and then, and with a pair of ranked opponents at the Pav this weekend, and the Badgers later this month, that could mean a lost match. The goal, for a team with National Championship aspirations, is to work the bugs out in September, and peak in early December.
Reader C.B. notes that the Gators had some aggressive servers. C.B. also remembered me writing that I had court-side seats for the first few games, and thought he spotted me just to the right of the Scorer’s Table.
JOHN: Yes, the Gators did have some aggressive servers. And it caused them to make a bunch of service errors. I think that when Coach McCutcheon joined the Gophers (11 yrs ago) he thought that dominating the net would be enough to win Championships. But the D1 game has evolved to the point that you are not going to beat a good team at the net, if you allow them to play “in system” all the time; you have to serve aggressively to beat good teams. And this is why the Gophs are serving more aggressively, and making more service errors, than they did 4 or 5 years ago.
That was a different big-guy-with-a bad-leg next to the Scorer’s Table. I was court-side all right, but in the opposite left-corner, i.e, the southeast corner, i.e., the University Ave/Williams Arena corner, behind the ball girl.
Several seats to my left, along the sideline, were a young man doing the play-by-play for BTN and an attractive blonde doing the analysis, a former player perhaps, but I didn’t recognize either of them. Several seats to my right, along the baseline, sat former Gopher and NBA star, Jimmy Pete. JP was sitting with an athletic-looking Black man about his age – perhaps (I’m speculating) another former NBAer and maybe the father of one of the VBallers on the court. (I think I have spotted former NBAer Calvin Booth, Carter’s father, at previous events, and this was a different guy.)
Sitting an inch from the field of play (about 10 ft from the out-of-bounds lines) sounds exciting, and it is interesting. But it is not as good a seat, for watching the match, as my regular seat in row 14. For one thing, the ball girl, doing her job, steps in the way as inopportune times; and for another, I can’t really follow the action on the far-side of the net very well. I hope to be back in row 14 for the Badger game on Oct 25.