Texas must be pretty good. I hadn’t seen them, and I still haven’t because the Strib lied to us again. DID ANYBODY SEE IT? Anyway the Gophers lost in 4 sets, 21-25, 18-25, 25-23, 22-25. Apparently every set was close; even in Set 2, a 7-point loss, the Gophs were right-there at 15-18. (I noticed that Ohio State, who was rated #7 nationally before the season started, lost their first two matches, and wondering to whom, I looked it up – both to Texas, in Columbus. So the Longhorns probably are pretty good.)
Individually, Landfair, averaging 15 kills per match, posted 16 against the #1 Longhorns. But the big news was the break-out excellence of Freshman Julia Hanson, who had 14 kills (presumably from the right-side). Add 12 from Wenaas, and that’s 42 outside-hitter kills. And Freshman Middle Carter Booth contributed 5 kills and 5 blocks.
So the Gophers held their own at the net, and then some, actually outhitting the Longhorns .250 to .230 — pretty unusual for a team that lost in 4 sets – and not bad, playing Texas at Texas.
The thing that killed the Gophers, apparently, was 19 service errors. 19! We’ve talked about this before, every player on this team is capable of serving 100% — if that’s the goal. But apparently, the game plan was to serve aggressively, all night – presumably to knock Texas out of system. But this aggressive serving produced a mere 6 aces. If the Gophs had made only, let’s say, 9 service errors., and had earned, let’s say, 9 aces (as in fact, Texas did), then judging from the closeness of sets 1 & 4, and given that we outhit Texas, the Gophs probably would have won the match. But an error-to-ace ratio of 19 to 6 is hard to overcome.
The available data shows no indication of contributions from Lauren Crowl or McKenna Wucherer, and given Julia Hanson’s productive match, it seems that Prior Lake star has won the starting role of Right-side Hitter/Opposite. At least for now.
NEXT UP: #18 ranked (RPI) Florida, Sunday at the PAV
