Several GopherVBallRocks readers have harbored the thought that our Gophs had been consistently overrated in the polls– and it looks like they were right, probably all along. Bruins in three, and the better team won, 18-25, 22-25, 22-25. It doesn’t help we have lost 4 of our best players Acevedo now out for the season, also, leaving us with no plausible subs. It also doesn’t help that 5 of the 8 healthy players are freshman – playing like freshman.
SET 1: Wasn’t as close as the score suggests. The Gophers trailed from the get, and were down 14-24 before a late rally. For whatever reason, the ‘25 Gophs have often started slow in Sets 1, and Acevedo has often been the exception, keeping the Gophs alive until the rest got into it. Now she’s not on the floor. My sense, watching from the stands, was that we were outplayed in every aspect of volleyball during Set 1.
SET 2: The late Set 1 rally seemed to help the Gophers’ morale, and we took leads of 3-0, 8-4, and 14-8. Things were looking up. It felt like we were going to win the set,and maybe the match, perhaps leading to a we-got-this-season. And as soon as I thought that, we went on a 6-15 run to fall behind 20-23.
Set 3: We rallied from 2-5 to 7-5, then back to 9-13. We bounced back to take a brief 17-16 lead, but fell apart again. I have suggested that one thing we miss transitioning from the Shaffmaster era to the Stella era would be Shaffmaster’s leadership. Beside being a respectable, if somewhat slow, setter, Shaffmaster seemed to have knack for playing her best when both teams were at 20-something. Stella may get there, but she isn’t demonstrating that extra gear yet. Nor does anyone else on this current squad. Hanson, a fourth year senior, is the team’s best player, and she leads by example. But Hanson doesn’t seem to have Shaffmaster’s ability to put the team on her shoulders and drag them to victory.
If you enjoy solid defense, this was a great match to watch. In Sets 2 & 3, the Gophers played great defense, meaning strong blocking by Taylor, Myers and Hanson and amazing digs by Taylor, Hanson, Gilk, Thibault and Garr. But UCLA played better defense. Time after time it appeared that Gopher hitters had put one away – only to see the Bruins dig it up and get a return.
Hanson, our best hitter and most veteran player, had a respectable 13 kills, but also 9 errors, and a meager hitting percentage of .087. Gilk and Myers were our next most productive hitters with 5 kills each.. Meanwhile, Hanson’s Bruin counterpart had 15 kills and a .282 percentage – and she had slightly more help, two with 6 kills. Part of the problem was that Hanson was dinking more than hitting, and Taylor and Myers were actually whiffing on sets. (Which apparently doesn’t bring their percentage down because they never even touched the ball.) I told you you would love Stella Swenson – but I didn’t love her tonight. She was getting to balls that Shaffmaster wouldn’t have reached – but Stella wasn’t putting them where her hitters wanted them.
NOTES:
- In Sets 1 & 2 Stella was coming out, replaced by Crowl, for one-half rotation when Lee subbed in to serve for Gilk. The strategy here is that Lee has been our best server, Crowl is a bigger blocker than Stella, and it gives Stella a breather and a chat with our setter-coach. But it wasn’t working tonight; Lee didn’t record a single Ace, Crowl never recorded a block or a kill, and Lee cost us two points by not getting to balls Stella would have gotten to. We abandoned this to start Set 3, letting Gilk serve for herself, and then went back to it again, late. (Not sure why?)
- I had thought that our serve receive actually got slightly better when Kinney replaced Acevedo – who struggled at times. (I think Kinney is the better receiver of the two.) But all this did was to shift our recent opponents’ attention to Hanson – who also has struggled recently. UCLA had seen the film and targeted Hanson from the get, resulting in two shanked receives. For Sets 2 & 3, Coach Cook shifted to a receive of Garr, Kinney and Gilk, hiding Hanson. We had started the season with a 3 Libero receive that looked good, now we were reduced to a 3 Freshman receive that isn’t great.
- This lineup of Freshmen, Garr, Kinney, Stella, Taylor and Gilk is going to produce some big wins for the Maroon & Gold, but maybe not this season, and probably not any time soon.
NEXT UP: Ohio State, Sunday at the Pav, 1:00,B9TN+) This is a winnable match, but not iff we play like we did against UCLA.