Month: October 2025

In 4 sets, 25-19, 25-19, 18-25, 25-19.  At Indiana, making this the Gophers second straight road win! I feel like the Gophs might be slightly overrated, but if we’re overrated at #20, the Hoosiers are definitely overrated at #23. The Hoosiers did have a great Oct 3,4 weekend, defeating UCLA and So. Cal on their West Coast road trip. This was our first win over a rated team, but you have to wonder how long the Indiana Team we played tonight will remain top-25? 

Set 1: Kinney was on fire, 7 kills without a hitting error, and Hanson had a pair of nice kills toward the end of the set.                                                                                                                                               Set 2: More Hanson and a lot of Gilk; Gilk spurring the Gophs to their first significant lead halfway through the set. But the big Set 2 news was 4 aces by Stella, 3 of them consecutive.  We had more Aces than blocks in set 4.                                                                                   Set 3: Not sure if it was complacency or what, but our serve-receive suddenly went bad (especially Hanson). The lone bright spot was Myers generating offense late to give the Gophs momentum into set 4.                                                                                                                                      Set 4: Stella did a great job of distributing the ball all match, but especially in Set 4. Hanson, Gilk and Kinney were all effective with strong blocking by Myers and Taylor. 

Hanson led the way with 17 kills and a very impressive .457. The Gophs as a team hit .412; you won’t lose many matches hitting .400 or higher. A lot of the credit goes to our serve-receive; except for Set 3, we were making decent first passes – which makes Stella’s job much easier. Stella also kept the Hoosier defense off balance by not always making the obvious set. Stella’s 5 aces didn’t hurt either

Note: the up-ref was calling throws, 2 on the Gophs and at least 1 on Indiana, on hits that other Big Ten refs let go. 

NEXT UP: A Short trip to West Lafayette for a Sunday at Noon match (BTN+) against a very strong Purdue squad, ranked #11. (And seemingly not-overrated.) An interesting match for Myers who transferred from Purdue – could she get hot against her former team? I know they’ll expect her “slide,” and try to take it away. I said last week that I’d be happy with a weekend split, and I’m happy – but I could be really happy with a win at Purdue – the signature win the Gophs are still looking for.

I went into the weekend feeling that a split on this Northwest road trip would be good, but after last night’s embarrassing loss to the Ducks, I wasn’t feeling very optimistic. But the Gophs flipped the switch and beat the Huskies in four, 14-25, 25-17, 25-20, 25 12. Were the Gophers jet-lagged last night? Were the Huskies still celebrating last night’s 5-set win over Penn State? Did the Gophs “win one” for Coach Cook, who’s last job was at Washington? We know it wasn’t because Oregon is much better than Washington; Washington beat Oregon last weekend. Was this the match that will change the course of the season? Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Set 1: The Gophers were terrible. Most of our third touches were free-balls, and on the rare occasion that we actually spiked one, the Huskies dug our lips off, Honestly, 14-25 sounds closer than it felt. Hanson had 3 kills, which was only slightly encouraging.

Set 2: Tied 10-10, the Gopher Pins, especially Hanson, Gilk and Myers, fueled a long service run by Garr, reaching 17-10, and not looking back.

Set 3: This was tighter, tied 7-7 and 15-15, behind Hanson and Gilk, Kinney and Myers got going as well and Washington had no response. 

Set 4: The Gophers jumped out to an 8-0 lead — and the Huskies seemed eager to get to the locker room.

Serving was dramatically different one night later. Last night the Gophs killed almost any chance they might have had with horrible serving. Tonight, we had 6 aces vs 4 errors (I’ll take that any night). But more importantly, it was the Huskies who couldn’t serve, finishing with 4 aces vs 14 errors! I don’t know how well Washington served last night, but they couldn’t have served that bad while beating Penn State.

And as mentioned, Hanson (the leadership we’ve been looking for?) and Gilk showed up big time. Last night was one of the worst matches in Hanson’s career; tonight she had 15 kills and a .306 percentage. And Gilk had her breakout match as a Gophers, with 11 kills and a .550 percentage. And Myers, who came on a bit in last night’s fourth set, got started earlier and racked up 12 Kills (5 on overpasses) and 5 blocks. Strangely,  things went the other direction for Taylor; last night she was the Gophers’ lone bright spot, and tonight she barely made the box score. But she’s a freshman, so let’s give her a break.

NEXT UP:

At #22 Indiana on Friday, 5:00, BTN

At #12 Purdue on Sunday, Noon, BTN+

I’d be thrilled with another split.

Reader R.A. had shared his views before I even got home. His take on the match itself was pretty much the same as mine — except that R.A. was incensed by the endless babbling of the play-by-play announcer. I get it, the guy was a clown; but here is a tip for R.A. and anyone else annoyed by the admittedly amateur announcers we get on BTN+ — that’s what the MUTE button is for.

The freshmen-heavy Ducks have struggled this season, but the Gophers were the cure, Ducks in four, 19-25, 25-23, 14–25 & 18-25. There was a brief moment of hope, after the Set 2 win, that we might have turned things around; but we stunk it up again in Set 3. 

Just one match after serving very well against Ohio State, we served horribly. I had us with 6 aces vs 12 errors. And our serve-receive was worse. It felt like less than half of our receives gave Stella the ball where she wants it, and less than half of Stella’s sets were where our hitters wanted it, and I’d swear we ended up dinking or bumping the third touch more often than attacking it. Kinney led the team (I had her with 9) kills — primarily because she’s the only strong dinker on the team. Hanson finished with 6 kills, two of those from the back row. I haven’t seen the official numbers, but I’m guessing Hanson’s hitting percentage was in negative numbers.

The lone bright spot on the team was Taylor, who I had with 6 kills and 6 blocks, and who dominated the net when she was on the floor, She had an especially strong Set 2, finishing with a kill for set-point. Myers was invisible for the first 3 sets, before getting hot in Set 4, finishing with 7 kills (6 slides and 1 OP). That was it for bright-spots; not much from our outside hitters

We know it can be tough for a freshman-heavy team to play well on the road — and it doesn’t get any easier. Not tomorrow night at Washington or when we get back to the Pav to host better teams than Oregon. I know that some Readers were looking forward to the transition from the Shaffmaster-era to the Stella-era. But one thing that Shaffmaster provided was leadership when the going got tough, and I’m not seeing that, so far, on this ’25 squad. I worry that a long losing streak will cause these freshmen to lose their confidence.

Taylor stepped up tonight. We need her to continue to play at that level — and for a couple more, freshmen or not, to join her. Washington at Washington will be tough, but we have the talent to play a lot better than we did tonight.

Our Gophers, who I felt were on a tipping point going into today’s match vs Ohio State at the Pav, tipped the right way, sweeping the Buckeyes 25-22, 25-21 & 25-14. The Buckeyes are not very good, and maybe we should have beaten them more easily, but at least we swept them. Which might help with our confidence heading into a gauntlet of 9 very tough games. (We’ll be the underdog in all 9.)

In a recent post I had suggested that we needed Leadership from inside the team, and suggested Hanson as a likely source given that she is our best player and also our most senior player. But maybe not the right personality type? I don’t have any inside info as to what was said by whom or to whom since last Wednesday’s fiasco, but Hanson had a big match today, so there’s that.

Specifically, Hanson had 16 kills (3 back-row) on 25 swings, with 2 errors, for an amazing .560 hitting percentage. As impressive as the .560 was, her percentage on good sets was surely higher as one of her hitting errors and many of her non-kills were dink-attempts off poor sets. I’d say she was about 1 for 6 on dinks. (I’m making this up, but Hanson must have been around .800 on good sets.)

The other bright spot was our serving, especially from Kinney and Garr. Kinney started the match with an ace, and finished the match with 4 aces and no serving errors! I had previously suggested that she might be a strong server – but that was based on a small sample. Garr had 2 aces and no errors, but she also served a ton of points. Garr was aided in this by serving behind a front row of Hanson, Gilk and Myers. Gilk started slow, but finished with a second-best 8 kills, and passed well.

If one wanted to look for negatives, in a close win over a bad team, they would include:

• Barely any offense from our Middles during Sets 1 & 2. Not necessarily our Middles’ fault, you can’t generate offense if Stella doesn’t set you. And not necessarily Stella’s fault – hard to set our Middles without a good first pass, which she wasn’t getting. And
• Kinney had 4 of her 5 match-kills in Set 1 (when we needed it) and then disappeared as a hitter. Kinney continued to serve well, but finished the match with a hitting percentage of zero (meaning she had 5 hitting errors to nullify her kills).
• We won’t beat good teams with offense only from Hanson, no matter how well she plays.

THE ROAD AHEAD IS BRUTAL:

Oregon at Oregon (Fri, 10/17, 8:00, BTN+), 

Washington at Washington (Sat. 10/18, 9:00 BTN+), 

# 20 ranked Indiana at Indiana (Fri, 10/24, 5:00, BTN), 

# 12 ranked Purdue at Purdue (Sun. 10/26, Noon, BTN+)

# 28 ranked Illinois at the Pav (Wed 10/29, 7:00, BTN)

#22 ranked USC at the Pav (Sat, 11/1, TBA, BTN+)

#7 ranked Wisconsin at Wisconsin (Wed, 11/5, 7;00, FS1)

#1 ranked Nebraska, at the Pav (Sat, 11/8, 2:30, Peacock)

#19 ranked Penn State, at the Pav, Fri, 11/14, 7:00, BTN)

WHEW! It gets a little easier after these 9 matches, but it may not matter if these freshmen don’t pick it up fast. Winning 4 of the 9 would be very encouraging.

I could be over-thinking this, but I believe that our ‘25 Gophers are at a major point in their season, from which things could go very well – or very poorly. 

Our pre-season ranking was #14. I thought 14 was a bit high, and it was assuming a completely healthy and deep team. We lost our season opener, on a neutral court, to a good Texas A & M team. Despite a couple injuries, we then rattled off 12 straight wins, mostly sweeps. The competition during this run was on the weak side, but among the 12 victories were a 4-set win over a strong South Dakota State squad at the Pav, and a sweep of Marquette at Marquette, followed by a Pav sweep over a decent Michigan State squad and Rutgers. Bumping our National rating to #10.

I was feeling confident, and more importantly, so was the team. Coach Cook was feeling so confident that he subbed Olivia into an undecided third set against Rutgers – which didn’t go well at all! I was surprised by this, certainly not something McCutcheon would have even considered, but Cook pulled Olivia out in time to save the sweep.

Two readers chimed in on this:

CB: “I think Coach Cook is smart to play his bench when he has the chance, it’s good for team morale, generally. And maybe especially playing Olivia occasionally, because there is this question about whether she really belongs on this team. Also, using Olivia against Rutgers in that third set pushed the team’s back up against the wall. There will be other “pressure-situations” like this in our future.”

RA: “I was there, and Rutgers was no rout. Sets 1 & 3 could easily have easily been lost and we would have been down 1 set to 2 going into Set 4. I love these freshmen, but there are a bunch of Big Ten teams that are better than Rutgers, and I think this team is going to struggle.”

BACK TO JOHN: There was never a moment during the Rutgers Match that I felt, that the Gophers felt, that they could lose that match. And I liked the “no-sweat, we-got-this” swagger that these freshmen bring. Maybe this team is better than I thought they were.

Then, with injuries mounting, the wheels fell off. We lost in 4 sets to a Michigan squad that had been swept by an MSU squad that we swept a week earlier. We had two excuses: 1) On top of losing Palabiyik for the season, Garr was out, leaving us with Thibault and no D.S. and 2) It was this freshman-dependent team’s first Big Ten road match. And Garr is back, so maybe a one-off bad day. We beat Northwestern at Northwestern.

Then the embarrassing sweep at the Pav by UCLA. OUCH! The Bruins are a good team but they aren’t Nebraska. Down 4 players for the season, now including Acevedo who had been our one fast-starter in previous matches, the Gophers played poorly until late in Set 1, too late for a mini-rally to make any difference. We carried the momentum into Set 2, but couldn’t even win that set. We played pretty good defense in Sets 2 & 3, but generated hardly any offense.

R.A. commented on that also: Mid-Set 1 I told my seatmate we would be swept. Even Hanson’s 13 kills (with a pathetic .083, dragged down by roll shot after dink after roll shot. All match, weak receives leading to poor passes to Stella, leading to poor sets that led to dinks and rolls. Gophs were a team completely out of system and off their game. They looked confused and frustrated, not sure what to do. Stella was just as frustrated.  I hope we can handle Ohio State. If not, the season is in trouble. Hopefully, Coach uses rest of this season to teach them how to get past ups and downs up their play without falling into frustration. 

BACK TO JOHN: If they play like they did against UCLA, through these next 5 matches, these Gophers will lose every match and have no chance of even making the NCAAs. I do believe that they are capable of playing significantly better. Cook is out of options for lineup changes, or Xs & Os. Motivation gets tossed around, but this is more about regaining their confidence in themselves and each other. 

I did a lot of coaching with significant success in 3 sports at a variety of levels — all together, well over a thousand “games” with an overall record in the .600 to .650 range. And I can remember 3 pre-game or halftime speeches that fired my team up enough to make a difference. Maybe I was just bad at pep-talks, but my thought is that the “change” the Gophers need has to come from inside the 8 remaining starters.

They need on-the-court LEADERSHIP. Stella plays the position best suited for being the one — but she is clearly frustrated and seems to have lost confidence in herself. Hopefully that’s temporary. Hanson is the most skilled and most senior player on the team — but may not have the personality. Joe Mauer was a superstar, but not at firing up his team. Lindsey Whelan, nowhere near as talented as Mauer,  could put a team on her back. Maybe there are others among the remaining 8. I sure hope so, we need our confidence back.

SOMETHING TO WATCH FOR:

In the recent losses, the Gophs have really struggled with serve-receive. And unfortunately, the Buckeyes #10 has a killer serve. We can survive a OSU ace now and then, but if #10 (or others) can generate 4 or 5-pt runs, that can destroy confidence faster than anything.

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:

1. 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?)
2. 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.
3. 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.

Gophs defeated Northwestern at Northwestern in 4 Sets, 25-19, 25-22, 17-25, 26-24. Still don’t know what Garr’s injury was (concussion protocol maybe?). She was reportedly listed as “questionable” going into warm-ups, but played the entire match. Hard to pinpoint what Garr did that made so much difference, but the Gophs certainly looked better with her in the lineup.

Interesting match for Hanson. Without Palabiyik, Hanson is part of all 6 of our serve-receives. The Wildcats picked on her all match, and she struggled. I had her with 7 poor-receives. But Hanson’s serve-receive struggles didn’t affect her hitting, I had her with 18 kills (leading all hitters, 3 of the 18 back-row), and a solid .361 percentage, including 2 consecutive kills to finish off a close Set 2

The BAD NEWS is Acevedo. She started hot (as she often does), carrying the Gophs through Set 1 and part of Set 2 (7 kills, .316), then, late in Set 2, hurt her knee and had to be helped off the court. I haven’t heard anything official, but it looked bad – maybe another season-ender. I remember seasons in the recent past where the Gophs played an entire season without a major injury, and in typical seasons, no more than one per season. If Acevedo is out-of-action for a sustained period, she would be the fourth starter to go down. In one sense, we are fortunate that our most recent injury came at Outside Hitter, because it was the last remaining position where we had depth. Now, we have no depth anywhere, if anyone else goes down, even temporarily, we will be in big trouble.

Gilk started at Opposite and played okay, 7 kills. Kinney started the match on the bench, came in for Acevedo, and also had 7 kills. Kinney in for Acevedo is not much of a drop-off – but the next injury will be a huge drop-off.

Myers continued to play well, as expected, with 7 kills and 2 blocks, but the Freshman Taylor was the big story, with 6 kills and 6 blocks. Her kills were all off “quicks,” as the timing between her and Stella, on attempted “slides,” is not close to working. (The opposite of Myers, whose kills all come off “slides.”) The Stella-Taylor timing on slides is so bad that we are lucky to pop a free-ball over the net when we try one. Taylor also continues to take first-touches away from Garr & Thibault when we would rather she didn’t, and she continues to be late getting to the edges to set double blocks. But green as she is, she is a major presence at the net. Not sure how long it will take to clean some of her deficits up, but Taylor is going to make the All Big Ten Freshman Team this year, and All Big Ten Honors are in her future.

NOTES: 1) After 3 service-errors in the first two sets, Thibault was relieved of her serving duties for Sets 3 & 4, yielding to Gilk. Gilk also had 2 service-errors in 2 sets, but she also had 2 aces. 2) I don’t cringe when I see KInney attempt a dink or some other off-speed shot – because she’s good at it.

UP NEXT: Opening the Big Ten Season with MSU and Rutgers at Home, and Michigan and Northwestern on the Road, was about as easy as it could have been. 

Now the Meat Grinder starts, with our next six matches vs 

UCLA (Wed, 7:00. BTN) and Ohio State, (Sun, 1:00, BTN+) both at the Pav, then 

Oregon at Oregon (Fri, 10/17, 8:00, BTN+), 

Washington at Washington (Sat. 10/18, 9:00 BTN+), 

Indiana at Indiana (Fri, 10/24, 5:00, BTN), and 

Purdue at Purdue (Sun. 10/26, Noon, BTN+)

Oregon and Purdue are very good, and Washington on the second night of a back-to-back on the road will be tough, but I think a healthy (as healthy as now) Gopher squad could win any one of these matches, and therefore, conceivably all 6. But one more injury could leave our Gophs weakened enough to lose all 6. Cross your fingers and keep ‘em crossed. 

This is getting posted late because I experienced a health emergency almost immediately after the match. Coincidence? hmmm.

Our 10th ranked Gophers looked confident winning Set 1, and then the wheels fell off, Michigan in four, 25-18, 12-25, 14-25, 12-25. The Gophers have had off-nights in recent years, losing matches we thought they should win, but I don’t remember a Gopher team playing as poorly as they did tonight. 

It didn’t help that this was the first Big Ten Road match for this freshman-laden squad, it didn’t help that this team does not (yet anyway) have a leader who can put the team on her shoulders when the going gets tough (as Shaffmaster did these past two seasons), and it certainly didn’t help to play the match short Garr. 

We started the season with 3 liberos, and planning to play all 3. Then we lost Palabiyik for the season, so down to 2. Then, with Garr injured, we played with 1. Thibault wore the Libero jersey, and did okay, but we didn’t have anyone picking up Thibault’s normal role at D.S. Time after time, there were balls off our blockers or Michigan’s blockers that Thibault-playing-D.S. would have dug up – and nobody even touched the ball.

Our 3 Libero receive of Palabiyik, Garr and Thibault looked pretty good; our 1 Libero receive of Hanson, Acevedo and Thibault was horrible. I usually try to keep track of bad receives, but I gave up halfway through the match. In an earlier blog, I had speculated that if we lost the services of Garr or Thibault, perhaps plan B would be Gilk at D.S. I have no idea how well that would have worked, but it could hardly have worked worse than Coach Cook’s plan B – to go without a D.S. 

Instead Coach benched Kinney and used Gilk at Opposite – and Gilk was a modest bright spot among the chaos. Coach also benched Stella a couple of times (this was a double-sub, Crowl in for Stella to play Opposite and Georgia Lee in for Gilk as back-row setter) to limited effect. Coach even benched Hanson for Set 4, which didn’t work at all, As I said – a disaster.

I have no idea what Garr’s injury was; I hope she can play Sunday at Northwestern.