Our Gophers beat Florida in 4 sets, 25-22, 17-25, 25-22, 25-16, in front of a full house at the Pav. But our Gophs barely out scored Florida, 92-85, overall, and got out-hit by Florida, .211-.203, and out-blocked, 14-11, as well. The second set was especially grim, with the Gophers getting spanked in every possible way. I guess the good news is that this Gopher Team can win without dominating the net.
Through sets 1 & 2, the Gopher kills were pretty-well spread around. Taylor Landfair, who had been averaging 15 kills/match, ended up with 14, but we didn’t see the Landfair Shock-and-Awe until the decisive 4th set. Interestingly, only half of Landfair‘s kills were straight-forward left-side power-shots. I had her with 1 right-side kill, 2 back-row kills (she is playing more back-row this year), and 4 dink-kills. Not surprisingly, Landfair dinks for points after she establishes her Shock-and-Awe power; and does not dink well off of bad sets.
Jenna Wenaas, the other half of our intimidating left-side power tandem, picked up 11 kills, also coming on strong in sets 3 & 4. A Libero-quality passer, Wenaas also contributes significantly in the back row. What’s not working, yet, is her back-row attacks (I didn’t credit her with any B-R kills today), or her jump-serve (I counted 3 service-errors vs zero aces). But it appears that both Wenaas and the Gopher coaching staff are committed to having Wenaas hit back-row and jump-serve. And I’m willing to bet that it will pay-off eventually.
And Once again, the Gophers made more service-errors, 10 (vs 6 Aces) than reader R. A. will be happy with. CC McGraw had zero service-errors (by my count), but half of the Aces. Better yet, two of McGraw’s Aces came from a tie score of 19-19, propelling the Gophs to a Set 1 win.
The big story was our Freshmen. Today was not a good day for our freshmen, especially Middle Carter Booth. I had convinced myself, and maybe GopherVBall Rocks readers, that freshman Booth was going to immediately dominate. Maybe she will, in time, she contributed to the Set 1 victory, but then, looking very freshman-like, contributed to a 10 pt deficit in Set 2. She made a couple of hitting errors, but perhaps more importantly, she was too-often late closing her blocks. This is likely to be an on-going concern. Booth is a big girl, with a lot of mass to move, and the D1 tempo is probably faster than she is used to. She’ll get better; soon I hope.
Coach McCutcheon benched Booth in favor of grad-transfer Naya Gros, and the Gophers’ fortunes turned the corner. In the final 2 ½ sets, Gros scored 5 kills and 4 blocks, matching exactly the contribution of our other Middle, Senior Ellie Husemann, who played all 4 sets. It now appears that the question of who the ’22 Gopher’s two Middles will be, is far from settled.
Freshman Opposite Julia Hanson didn’t sparkle either. I had her with 4 kills and zero blocks, in 4 sets. She stayed in the line-up, generally, but her blocking was so ineffective, against the powerful Florida hitters, that McCutcheon started spot-subbing in red-shirt freshman Lauren Crowl. (Who wasn’t especially effective either.)
Future super-star McKenna Wucherer, once again, didn’t play, but at least the mystery is solved. McKenna (I use her first name because her sister Miranda, another grad-transfer, did play, as a designated server) was on the bench, her right foot in a boot. I could not tell, from where I sat, how long her recovery time might be. But given our comparative ages, I’m guessing McKenna will back on the court faster than I will.
Thoughts on Shaffmaster:
- Love her or hate her, red-shirt sophomore Melani Shaffmaster is our setter. She is not as quick on her feet as the Badger’s Izzy Ashburn, or the Husker’s (they play 2) Kennedi Orr. This means that when the Gophers first pass is mediocre. Shaffmaster has to bump-set. She’s a terrific bump-setter, but when she bump-sets, we lose all finesse and deception, making our powerful hitters much easier to block. The only way to fix this is for the Gophs to make better first passes.
- I also noticed today, from my court-side seat, that when Shaffmaster goes to the floor for a dig, she doesn’t, understandably, pop back up as quickly as a small-girl might. We’re going to have to live with this – unless McGraw & Kilkelly can start getting more of those balls.
- On the positive, Shaffmaster is a good setter when she gets a good pass, and now, in her 3rd season, we are seeing more finesse and deception in her sets.
- And, she is starting to become the offensive threat we dreamed she would be. I’ve said I wanted her to attack at least twice per set, earning at least 1.0 kills per set. And I counted 4 kills in 4 sets today.
- She also had at least 3 blocks today, including 2 on “over-passes.” I’m not talking about the easy kills when the opponent inadvertently passes to you; those are candy. I’m talking about when the Gophers inadvertently pass the ball to the opponent, and you turn their candy into Gopher points. If you’ve never played high-level volleyball, you can’t imagine how tough a play that is. And Shaffmaster did it twice today!
NEXT UP: Weekend games at the Pav, 18th ranked Oregon on Friday Night, and 12th ranked Stanford on Saturday Night. (The rankings noted above are from this morning, and might change as a result of this weekend’s matches.)