— On the Gophers weekend trip to #7 ranked Ohio State & #25 ranked Illinois. But after watching the Gophs squeak out a 4-set, 25-23, 16-25, 25-15 25-23 win in Columbus, I’m feeling greedy. A sweep on the road against two nationally-ranked teams would be sweet!
I say “squeeked out a win” because the total score for the match was only 91-86 in the Gophers favor. But I’m not complaining, not even about the Gophers mediocre 2nd set; any win on the road against a highly rated team is an accomplishment to be proud of. (Also a “signature win” when NCAA seeding time comes around.)
As we’ve said often, this was Steph Samedy’s Match. I had her with 4 kills in the Gophers’ Set 1 win, 2 in the Set 2 loss, 4 again in the Set 3 win, and an astonishing 9 kills in the close-out Set 4! Plus 7 blocks (a season high?), and a ton of digs to go with her 19 kills. According to one of tonight’s BTN announcers, Samedy has more digs for the season than 3 Big Ten starting Liberos! That’s a heavy workload; good thing the Gophs get a day off before playing at Champaign,
Miyabe had 13 kills and Wenaas 11. (Wenaas had a tough night at the serve, with several service error and a foot-fault. And she still can’t dink. But she dug great.)
And Rubright had a nice match, with 3 kills and 6 blocks. Once again a BTN announcer (possibly the same one from 2 weeks ago) explained that, “Rubright is in the line-up because she is the biggest offensive threat of the Gophers’ Middles.” Rubright is not yet reminding me of the Badgers’ Roettke, or even the 2019 Gopher’s Taylor Morgan, but 3 kills and 6 blocks in a 4-set win is a good match by current Gopher standards.
The announcer also reported that the Gophers rank last (among 14 teams) in the Big Ten in the % of sets to their Middles. (13% compared to #1 Wisconsin’s 33%.) I’ve written extensively about the Gopher’s struggle to diversify their offense. One new wrinkle tonight was an unprecendented number of times Shaffmaster attacked on the 2nd touch. She only got 2 kills out of maybe 8 or 9 attacks, but I was happy to see it. You expect a short setter to dump the ball over “on 2” about once a set just to keep the opponent off balance; but Shaffmaster is 6ft-3 (and maybe not the quickest setter in the Big Ten, which is part of the no-middle-offense problem), so she ought to attack more. She didn’t attack as often, or as successfully as I had hoped, during her first season, or early this season; but maybe tonight’s performance indicates growing confidence. And even if her kill % isn’t great, one-kill-a match by our setter would do a lot to improve the diversity of our offense.
Reporting on the Gophers’ 4-set win over the Buckeyes a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned the amazing digging, all-match long, by C.C. McGraw and her teammates, and their Buckeye counterparts. Once again there were countless balls seemingly down for a point, only to be kept alive by spectacular saves. These two teams are fun to watch.
UP NEXT:
#25 Illinois (losers tonight at home to Nebraska) at Champaign, Sat @ 6:00 on BTN + Sweeping the weekend won’t be easy, but if Samedy plays as well as she did tonight, it’s doable.