Wisconsin won their 26th consecutive home-court match, beating our Gophs 25-17, 25-22, 25-17. It was the Badgers wire-to-wire. The 2nd set was the Gophers best; after spotting Wisconsin a 5-1 head start, the Gophs tied the match at 10-10, 11-11, 7 12-12, but never took the lead. And after the Badgers led 24-17, the Gophs fought off 5 set-points to pull within 24-22. It looked as though maybe the Gopher had some momentum going into the 3rd set, but it disappeared early, with the Badgers jumping to a 15-8 lead, and the Gophs never getting closer than 4.
The Badgers definitely get more offense from their Middle Hitters, especially 5th-year senior Dana Rettke, the most dominate Middle in the country. Rettke had 14 or 15 kills, vs 1 by Myers and none from either of our other Middles (Husemann, who was great last week against Maryland started., but after an ineffective 1st set was replaced by an equally ineffective Rubright.) The Gophers, despite a great match by Badger Freshman (from Poland) Outside Hitter Julia Orzol, got way more offense from our outside hitters. The amazing Steph Samedy (who beat Rettke out for Big Ten Player of the Year last season) had 16 kills and Landfair (especially in Set1) and Wenaas (especially in Set1) added 8 each.
And the contrast in outside power was perhaps even wider than that; Rettke attracts so much attention that when she is in the front row, that the Gophers never got more than one block up against the Badger pins, and sometimes none at all; whereas, with no Middle threat for the Gophs, Samedy, Landfair and Wenaas were facing double blocks on most of their swings.
The Badgers’ Middle offense and the Gophers outside offense more or less off-set, and if that was all there was to volleyball, the match might have been even. But the Badgers also had a major advantage in serving and serve-receive. The Badgers had 3 or 4 aggressive servers, which kept the Gophers on their heels all night – whereas only Katie Myers serving gave the Badgers trouble. (Myers was serving when the Gophers ran 5 pts at the end of set 2.) The Badgers also out-dinked the Gophers by a considerable margin.
The Gophers have not been a great serving or dinking team at any time during Hugh McCutcheon’s 10 seasons coaching the Gophs. I can’t tell if that’s due to recruiting preferences or coaching strategy, but 10 seasons is enough to say it is not a coincidence. McCutcheon’s teams have consistently been strong, even dominant, at the net, and often that’s enough. But against a team that can match the Gophs kill-for-kill and block-for-block, the Gophers mediocrity at serving and dinking puts the Gophs at a serious disadvantage.
TOMORROW NIGHT: Gophs at Evanston 7:00 on BTN+