Month: September 2022

Reader R.A. writes: Coach McCutcheon, asked about serving issues, said he wanted players to “serve hard,” not “just get it in” and to aim at spots.  My thought is the most effective serving comes from McGraw, Shaffmaster and even Kilkelly, more stylized and changed directions. McCutcheon had been replacing Wenaas with McGhie, though now Wenaas serves, but no longer her sky-high shots into the net.

Sitting in student section for WSU, the main (not sole) improvement I noticed was ALL the players hit their kills hard, even Landfair.   It seemed this tailed off in the 3rd (losing) set, but then picked up again in the 4th.  Booth was great.  Husemann seemed off in her timing with sets, which resulted in balls off the side of her hand, some of which surprised WSU.  And John is right, McKenna Wucherer has been sterling, by far the most aggressive player on the court. Too bad she comes out when it’s her serve because she was also good in the back row.

JOHN: If I was coaching the Gophers, I would coach them to serve “aggressively,” which is not exactly the same as “hard,”(but maybe what McCutcheon meant), especially against strong teams.. And serving “aggressively” increases the risk of, and ultimately over 4 or 5 sets, the number of, service errors. As mentioned a few days ago, Stanford made 23 service errors  while beating Nebraska, in 4 sets, in Lincoln! I didn’t see the match, but I’m guessing that Stanford was serving “aggressively” all night, and that this kept the Huskers out of system. Ultimately, it’s a question of playing to win vs playing to not lose. Admittedly, Wenaas had not been gaining this advantage with her jump-serves, which is why she has discontinued this – at least for now.

 McKenna Wucherer is going to be a great addition to this team, and I assume that she will be playing back-row, and probably serving, before long. This week she went from on the bench with her foot in a boot — to our starting Left-side Hitter; I’m guessing that maybe McCutcheon wanted to “ease her in” a bit.

The unranked Washington State Cougers. The Cougers are a Pac 12/Power Conference Squad, and they came into the Pav with an 8 & 2 record — but other than a season-opening win over Duke, their 8 victories came against teams you would expect St. Thomas to schedule.

The Gophers were clearly the better team, taking the first two sets 25-16 & 25-13, before letting Set 3 get away 24-26. The Gophs seemed to wake from their stupor to take a 17-9 lead in Set 4, before letting the Cougers back in it. The Gophs eventually won Set 4 25-20. Our Gophs dominated the net as we hope they will often, outhitting WSU .364 to .196 for the match.

ENCOURAGING SIGN #1: True freshman McKenna Wucherer (Wooker), who had worn a boot on her foot through the Gophers first 6 matches, followed her 13-kill debut against Pepperdine with 15 against Washington State.

ENCOURAGING SIGN #2: True freshman Carter Booth, who had 6 blocks and 11 kills in her debut against Baylor – and then played her way onto the bench with ineffective play, before showing a little spark late in the loss to Pepperdine, showed up again, with 12 kills (and 2 blocks) against Washington State, the vast majority of her kills on quick-sets from Shaffmaster,

WHAT I WAS TALKING ABOUT: When I (and the polls) were high on the Gophers going into the season, it was partly on the expectation of these two dynamic freshman making their marks. With all due respect to Freshmen Julie Hanson and Lauren Crowl, and grad-transfer Naya Gros, who filled in admirably while we waited for Wucherer to get healthy and Booth to find her game, Wucherer and Booth are critical to the Gophers 2020 aspirations.

NOTES RE LANDFAIR:

• Besides being one of the leading power hitters in the country, Taylor Landfair is clearly the most effective dinker on this team. I’ve been tracking her dinking, and I have her with exactly 4 dink-kills in each of the first four matches at the Pav, each  a 4-set match, so exactly 1.0 dink-kills per set. A pretty good #.
• And all of them off perfect sets. When this powerful hitter makes contact 2 full feet above the net, the opponents back-line is naturally on their heels (I know I would be), creating good dinking opportunities.
• But Landfair also dinks, fairly often, off bad sets – and it never works! For one thing, opponents have figured out that she is not going to crank a bad set – so they’re not on their heels. I’d like to see her attack at least the best of those bad sets.
• I absolutely LOVE the 2 rotations the Gophs have with Landfair hitting Left-side and Booth hitting Middle. When Shaffmaster gets a perfect pass, she has the option of a short-set to the 6-7 Booth, or a longer set to the 6-5 Landfair, both in the same direction. That’s a terrifying pair of options.

NOTES RE WENAAS:

• In just 2 matches, a healthy Wucherer has made it obvious that she belongs in the line-up as 1 of 3 outside hitters. So one of them has to play Right-side, and at least for now it’s Jenna Wenaas.
• At least so far, Wenaas has not hit as effectively from the Right-side as she had been from the Left-side. Tonight, for example, she had more Left-side kills than Right-side kills, despite the fact that she played Left-side for one-half rotation, and Right-side for two and one-half rotations, getting many more swings from the Right-side. Though it might be for the best, this system does clearly not play to Wenaas’s strength as a hitter.
• Yet Wenaas seems a clear choice for Right-side over either Hanson, who has so far struggled to block (Wenaas did have 3 blocks tonight, I don’t think Hanson has yet had a 3-block match), and Crowl, who has yet to produce significant offense.
• Wenaas is also the best receiver/digger among the Gopher hitters. (She might be better than Kilkelly and almost as good as McGraw), so she still contributes.
• At least for now, Wenaas has abandoned her jump-serve, which was resulting in more service errors than aces.

UP NEXT: The rugged Big Ten season, starting for the Gophers on Friday at West Lafayette. (I’ll have more to say about the Gophers prospects during the coming week.)

In what is starting to look like a pattern, our Gophers lost in 4 sets, 28-26, 20-25, 18-25,22-25, to #22 ranked Pepperdine. The Gophs first loss of the season, to #1 Texas at Texas, in 4, wasn’t televised here, but the scores were close, so I figured no shame in that. Then last Sunday, they lost to Stanford in 4 at the Pav. I didn’t think the Gophers played especially well against Stanford, but the a couple days later Stanford won in 4 at Lincoln – so maybe Stanford’s really good. And now tonight we lose to Pepperdine at the Pav. It’s not like Pepperdine is a bad team, they’re nationally ranked. But a week ago the Gophs were ranked #3 nationally, and I heard a quote from the Stanford coach rating the Gophers as have the most powerful offense in the country. We shouldn’t lose to Pepperdine at home.

ENCOURAGING SIGN # 1

Some readers have been wondering why I keep writing about McKenna Wucherer (pronounced Wooker), who hasn’t even dressed for the Gophers first 6 matches. A) She was the #1 rated recruit in the country, & B) I thought she looked like a the #1 rated recruit in the country during last Spring’s exhibition matches.

Last week McKenna was on the bench wearing a “boot” on her foot; tonight she was a starting Left-Side Hitter. And she started off great with 4 kills in Set 1, including 2 kills leading the Gophs to an 11-6 early lead. She did not play back-row or serve.

ENCOURAGING SIGN # 2

I’ve been begging for Setter Melani Shaffmaster to attack more balls, and she did tonight. I had her with 4 kills, including one for set-point in Set 1!

SO WHAT’S WRONG WITH OUR GOPHS?

1. Though Pepperdine outhit the Gophers, 64 kills at a .279 clip, to 50 kills at .204, it was the “floor game” where the Gophs were really outplayed. The Gophs had 4 aces (8 for Pepperdine), but it felt like 90% of the Pepperdine serve-receives resulted in a perfect pass to their setter. Not the case for the Gopher receives. Pepperdine also saved 20 or 30 near-kills by the Gophs, vs 5 or 6 saves for the Gophs.

• So far this season, Coach McCutcheon has been using Taylor Landfair all 6 rotations. This makes her an obvious target for opposing servers (Landfair being the Gophs big weapon, they want to make her work hard in the back row), and she has been struggling a little with her receives. The advantage of keeping Landfair in across the back row is that she can attack from the back row. But the tradeoff didn’t work tonight, as the Gophers had zero back-row kills. TLandfair had 4  back-row kills against Stanford and 9 against Oregon, but zero against Pepperdine despite multiple attempts. A couple of the failed attempts were due to poor sets, so not necessarily Landfair’s fault. But that’s sort of beside the point; Landfair made at least 3 service-receive errors vs zero back-row kills – so the trade-off didn’t work tonight.

• And Landfair, who brings the phrase “shock & awe” to mind when she unloads on a good set, is too timid, for my taste, when the set isn’t perfect. Landfair has the potential to be every bit as good as Steph Samedy was; the difference, so far, is that Samedy wasn’t afraid to attack a poor set.

• The Gophers are not getting enough offense from anywhere but left-side. I had Landfair with 16 kills and Wucherer with 13, out of 50. And 7 from Wenaas, but no back-row success and minimal success from our Middles. McCutcheon started Husemann and Gros, subbed Booth in for Gros to start Set 3, eventually subbed Davis in for Husemann, then went back to Husemann – but none were consistently effective. (Gros was especially unsuccessful on “slides.”)

• Nor were our Middles blocking. I had Pepperdine‘s #10 with 21 kills, and it felt like 19 of them were “power-angle” blasts. Defending against  “power-angle” attacks is the job of the Middle Blocker, but our Middles are consistently failing to “close the block,” i.e., getting their hands close to our outside blocker’s hands – leaving a gap for the opposing “power-angle” blasts. The big freshman, Carter Booth, has proven particularly slow in closing the block, and Husemann seems not strong physically strong enough to block “power-angle” blasts, even when she does get there.

• Nor are we getting much offense from our Right-Side Hitter, or “Opposite.” Freshman Julia Hanson had an impressive 14 kills against Texas, but minimal impact in other matches, and she hasn’t blocked well. Red-shirt Freshman Lauren Crowl has blocked a little better, but hasn’t generated much offense. Tonight’s insertion of the Freshman Wucherer bumped Jenna Wenaas to Right-side (and Hanson and Crowl to the bench –neither played at all), and I’m guessing, at least for now, that this night be the plan going forward). But Wenaas hit.069 for the match. So maybe Wucherer at Left and Wenaas at Right isn’t the answer. It certainly wasn’t tonight.

• And, contrary to the opinions of some GopherVBallRocks readers, I think the Gophs are not serving aggressively enough! Or at least not at the right time. Wenaas, the team’s only jump-server for example, had 3 service errors tonight, including one when the score was 25-25. (Exactly when I’d want her to back-off a bit and get it in.) Then in Sets 3 & 4, which Pepperdine led all the way, often by a substantial margin, which is when I’d want my servers to get aggressive because you need a spark, Wenaas was serving lollipops, which Pepperdine was teeing up for kills. (Here’s a statistic that might interest the “just put the damn ball in play” crowd: when Stanford beat Nebraska, in Lincoln, a couple nights ago, Stanford, the winning team, had 23 service errors!)

I’ve got some ideas what the Gophs need to do different, but I’ll keep that to myself until after Washington State, an unranked team for a change, plays at the Pav Saturday Night. One way or the other, the Gophs need to get these problems solved before starting the grueling Big Ten Season next Friday at Purdue.

R.I.P.J.D.

Stanford is probably a pretty good team; maybe better than the polls suggest. But our Gophers looked nothing like the #3 team in the country, going down easy, 20-25, 18-25, 25-22, 12-25, at the Pav.

Based on last night’s Stanford/Penn State game, I had suggested that the Gophs serve at #13; they did, and had some success. I also suggested hammering the ball at the undersized Cardinal setter when she was in the front row; and they failed at that. The main reason was the Cardinal’s aggressive serving, which gave the Gophs trouble all night, preventing Shaffmaster from teeing up the ball for our Left-side hitters to take advantage of an undersized setter.

(I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating, Taylor Landfair is an amazing hitter, maybe the best in the country, when she gets a perfect set. With a mediocre set, she’s a mediocre hitter. When she gets a poor set, she won’t even try to hit it. Keep in mind that she is early in her second season with the Gophs; she is not the polished put-down-a-bad-set hitter that Steph Samedy was last year, in Samedy’s 5^th season with the Gophs. Even so, I had her with 14 kills against Stanford, following last night’s 28 kills against Oregon; and 42 for the weekend against a pair of strong teams, isn’t bad.)

And GopherVBallRocks Readers, at least 3 of them, suggested that the Gophers stop serving aggressively and “just put the damn ball in play.” The Gophs ignored this advice in Set 1, where they committed 5 service errors, and lost 22-25. But then they heeded the advice, and stopped making service errors (only 2 total in the last 3 sets) by serving less aggressively, and lost 2 of the last 3 sets by a total score of 54-72. (Meanwhile, Stanford committed 12 service errors for the match, to the Gophers 7, repeating the results of last night’s match, where Oregon made fewer service errors than the Gophs, and lost in 4 sets. I’m not saying that this proves anything, but clearly, the correlation of fewer service errors to matches won, is not proven.)

Otherwise, the Gophers were dominated at the net, for the first time in 6 matches, by the shorter Cardinal, ultimately out-hit .269 to a pathetic .102, and out-blocked 13-5. Jenna Wenaas was fair, with 8 kills, but our second best offensive weapon was Setter Mel Shaffmaster, who contributed 4 kills. 4 aces, and 2 blocks. In a recall of last year’s squad, we got almost nothing from our Middles; I had Husemann, who played all 4 sets, with 2 kills, Gros, who played sets 1 & 2, with 2 kills, and Booth, who played sets 3 & 4, with 1 kill. A pathetic total of 5 kills from our middles, in 4 sets; following 6 kills in last night’s 4-set match — still not enough.

We saw this movie last year, and didn’t like it. When true Freshman Carter Booth put up a total of 13 kills and 13 blocks, in the first two matches of her collegiate career vs TCU and Baylor, I thought those days were over. They still might be when Booth “catches up” with the D-1 game, but she looked lost tonight.

Nor did we get much help, until late, from our Opposites. Last night, true freshman Julia Hanson, who had a breakout performance with 14 kills vs Texas, started the match but did not impress. And during last night’s Set 3, won by Oregon, Hanson seemed lost, so Coach McCutcheon replaced her with red-shirt freshman Lauren Crowl, who seems a less effective hitter, but a better blocker, and the switch seemed to help. Tonight, McCutcheon rewarded Crowl with the start, but got no blocks from Crowl during the first two sets, and only 2 kills; so he subbed Hanson back in for Sets 3 & 4, and it paid immediate dividends when Hanson got 4 kills, looking ever-so-briefly like the next Steph Samedy. But then Hanson disappeared, along with the rest of the team, in Set 4.

If one were to look hard for a ray or rays of hope to glean from tonight’s loss, it would be one of the following:

• McKenna Wucherer, 2020’s top-ranked recruit, who I thought looked great in three Spring scrimmages, then disappeared from sight during the inter-squad scrimmage 2 weeks ago, then was seen with a “boot” on her ankle last night, was on the bench tonight — not dressed-to-play, but without the boot. I have no idea what the time-table for McKenna to recover from her undisclosed injury might be, but it seemed encouraging. I think that if, and when, McKenna is fully recovered and back playing at 100%, she might be our starting Opposite. Or maybe, given how productive Landfair has proven to be from the Right-side, Opposite duties might be distributed, along with Left-side duties, among Landfair, McKenna and Wenaas. (Then again, if Hanson could play like she did in Austin, there might not be an opportunity for McKenna.)
• And after not attacking even once in Set 1, Shaffmaster started attacking as I’ve been pleading with her to. I scored her with 4 kills (in 4 sets, the rate I’m been hoping for), and no errors, on 7 swings, a .571 average. We need to see more of this.
• In fact, I thought Shaffmaster and CC McGraw, and Landfair had strong weekends . If those 3 can pull others up to their level their level of excellence, this team could still have championship potential.

The Gophs had 12 service errors (vs 5 aces) in last night’s close and hard-fought 4-set win over the Oregon Ducks. And readers besides R.A. are upset by it.

READER G.U. writes: The Gopher service errors are driving me nuts.  It is like missing free throws in BB. There is a reason they are called “free throws” they are FREE and not to be missed. The ladies do not need to strive for aces; just put the damn ball in play.

READER B.W. writes: Seems like service errors are frequent with the Gophers. Does Hugh play different servers to help prevent this problem? Just when they get momentum someone hits the net or serves long, crushing the momentum.

JOHN: I agree, service errors are frustrating. I don’t like it, and I doubt that the Gopher coaching staff is happy about it either. But let me repeat what I have said before, If the Gophers chose to prioritize the minimumization of service errors, they could probably make it through a 4-set match like last night, with zero or maybe 1 service error. But none of our readers are complaining, at least not on GopherVBallRocks, about the 20 hitting errors, in part because they came with 57 kills.

Wenaas was the worst last night, with 4 service errors (in probably 15 or so attempts). But Wenaas is also the one who is jump-serving, which is an aggressive strategy. For me, it was harder to understand Landfair’ 3 service errors, because she didn’t seem to be serving aggressively. Kudos to McGraw who had 1 service errors (and zero aces) last night, but who I thought was serving aggressively enough to force the Ducks out-of-system.

If they “just put the damn ball in play” as D.U. suggests, they will beat weak teams, but they will not win the Big Ten and National Championships. To win at that level, they will have to serve aggressively – and get better at it. Maybe the “getting better should take place in practice, but it’s just not the same.

In the prelim, the shorter but more powerful Nittany Lions squeaked past the Cardinal in five sets, and then the Gophers, led by a career night by Taylor Landfair, squeaked past the Ducks in four, 25-20, 25-22, 18-25 and 27-25.

When I say “Career Night” by Landfair, I’m not just talking 28 kills, but from everywhere, 13 left-side power kills, 8 back-row kills, 4 dink kills and 3 right-side power kills. And at least 3 great digs. And when I say“squeaked, our Gophs looked the better team in Sets 1 & 2, then fell apart, trailing 14-22 on their way to losing Set 3. Coach McCutcheon had stated Julia Hanson at opposite and Naya Gros at one of the Middles. For Set 4, he went with Lauren Crowl in place of Hanson and Carter Booth in place of Gros, but it didn’t seem to help as the Gophs started Set 4 down 3-10.

But riding Landfair, who the Ducks couldn’t stop, and with a little help from Crowl, who the Ducks seemed unprepared for, the Gophs clawed back to 15-15. Then, with the Gophs trailing 24-25, the Ducks made 2 unforced errors to put the Gophs ahead. And a Wenaas/Booth block put the Ducks away. But despite winning 3 of 4 sets, the Gophers only won the total score by 95-92

More individual details tomorrow, but it’s late and I want to say a bit about tomorrow’s (now today’s) opponent, the Stanford Cardinal.

The Cardinal.plays a 5-1. Their setter, #5, is quick and has good hands, but she does not seem tall enough to block the likes of Landfair and Wenaas. They have a strong Opposite, #10, when their setter is back-row, and they run an effective slide to a Middle, #17. But the Gopher Left-sides should score a ton when the Cardinal setter is front row.

Other notes re the Cardinal:

• They might have beaten Penn State if they hadn’t made so many service errors. If they serve better tomorrow night, and the Gophers continue to rack up service errors, the Gophers could have their hands full.
• The Cardinal dinks a lot, and defending the dink has not been a Gopher strength.
• The Cardinal’s #13, a left-side hitter, struggled all night with serve-receive; the Gophers should be serving at her every chance they get

And all 4 teams played hard tonight, and could be tired tomorrow.

Reader M.G. says the guy next to Jimmy Pete was Darrel Thompson.

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.

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 3^rd 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, 18^th ranked Oregon on Friday Night, and 12^th ranked Stanford on Saturday Night. (The rankings noted above are from this morning, and might change as a result of this weekend’s matches.)

On Friday evening, I had an opportunity to see some of the Badgers (now rated #6 after their loss to Baylor) at home vs Marquette (rated #24), and on Sat evening, an opportunity to see some of the Huskers (now rated #2, down from #1, not because they lost, but because of Texas’s strong start) at home vs Ole Miss (not a strong team).

The Gophs will get two Conference Season shots at the Badgers, the first, at the Pav, later this month. The Badgers are still strong at Middle, with 6-7 sophomore Smrek and 6^th-year senior Hart. But absent the finally graduated Rettke, and the Gophs addition of Booth (also 6-7, but more athletic) , the middle vs middle match-up will be even this year. Besides Rettke, the Badgers also lost star setter, from MN, Sidney Hilley. Their new setter?  MN’s Izzy Ashburn. Ashburn was the D.S. on last year’s Nat Champs. The 2022 Badgers are a strong team, outside hitter Robinson is tough. But as of now, I like our chances at the Pav on Sept 25.

We won’t see the V at the Pav at all this year, and won’t see them in Lincoln until the last match of the regular season on Nov 25. So it almost isn’t worth analyzing Huskers vs Gophers with so much that can change between now and then. But for what it’s worth, here’s what I saw. The Huskers also lost a couple of players from last year’s national runners-up, but they got four strong outside hitters (as do the Gophs). Interestingly, Coach Cook exploits that by playing a 6-2, using Eagan’s Kennedi Orr as one of his two setters. (This does not seem an attractive option for the Gophers this year, with only the one top-flight setter.)

Not sure how many GopherVBallRocks readers also read the Strib’s Patrick Ruesse. To Ruesse’s credit, he is one of the few such “experts” to credit the Gopher V-ballers as a “major” local team. Anyway, Ruesse’s Saturday column was an appraisal how the likelihood of “major” local teams achieving success in the coming year.

Ruesse gave our ladies a 15% chance. Sound bleak? Maybe, but before assigning a percentage chance of success, Ruesse defined “success for each team, as follows:

Twins: Win one playoff game.

Gopher Football: Win Big Ten West.

Vikings: Win NFC North.

Wild: Win a playoff series.

Wolves: Win a playoff series.

Gopher Men’s Basketball: Finish in the top 7 in the Big Ten.

Gopher Women’s Basketball: Finish in the top 7 in the Big Ten.

Gopher Women’s Volleyball: Win the National Championship! Ruesse doesn’t even entertain winning-it-all for any of the above teams.