Did not go our way. #20 Gophs fall to #12 Purdue, 25-23, 20-25, 18-25, 25-19 & 12-15.
A close, back and forth, match: Set 1: The Gophs led 5-2, fell behind 12-17 and 19-22, but ran 5 pts with Olivia serving behind a front row of Wooker, Hoecke & Crossen, to take a 24-22 lead. Set 2: The Gophs trailed 4-8, but surged to leads of 16-13 and 19-16, then fell behind 20-23. Two serve-receive errors by Crossen didn’t help. Set 3: This was the exception to back and forth. Our Gophs trailed 2-5, 10-14 and 17-24. Set 4: The Gophs started slow at 0-3, but surged to a lead of 11-6 and stayed 4 or 5 points ahead until the end, despite a pair of receiving errors by Thibault. Set 5: The Gophs led 2-0, fell behind 4-7, and never caught up.
Those that tear their hair out when the Gophers commit a lot of service-errors (including Maureen) can point to the match stats as why we lost. We out hit .251 to Purdue’s .197, a decisive edge, You ought to win a match with stats like that. But we made an atrocious 16 service-errors, 4 each by Garr and Hoecke, vs only 3 aces, while the Boilermakers had 9 aces vs 6 service-errors. We even committed back-to-back service-errors with leads of 23-17 and 24-18 in Set 4 – even I was tearing my hair out on those. As I’ve written before, serve aggressively when you’re behind late in the set – not when you’re ahead by 6!
Clearly, our serving cost us the match, right? Hard to argue but I’m going to try: * In our Set 1 win, we made 5 service-errors vs zero aces – but won the close set! * We continued to make service-errors in Set 4, but won that one too. And * Olivia who was our Designated Server all match, finished with 3 service-errors vs zero aces — but I thought she served great, consistently taking Purdue out-of-system – probably contributing to the Goph’s hitting advantage.
Olivia took advantage of serving behind that front-row of Wooker, Hoecke and Crossen, and I’m fairly certain (I don’t have the stat) that she served the most points of any Gopher. It still looks weird to see Olivia, clearly the heaviest player on the roster, wearing a Libero Jersey, but she also passed well. A big night for the front-row of Wooker, 20 kills at .228, Hoecke, 15 kills at .407 and Crossen, 13 kills at .303. Especially encouraging given that Hoecke and Crossen are both Freshman (Gilk did not play.)
Wooker’s team-leading 20 kills included 5 back-row kills and 5 dinks, including 2 kills on back-row-dinks – something we haven’t seen since Steph Samedy wore Maroon and Gold. On consecutive points (in Set 4, I think) Wooker had a back-row kill, and on the next point a pair of back-row attacks, the 2nd one for a kill. Wooker also got a kill for set-point in a tight Set 1. A strong match from our best player!
Kinney contributed 8 kills, but at only .118 – not a great match. And Taylor was a no-show on offense (I had her with 3 blocks), zero kills at minus .750. Taylor was replaced by Blazkova mid-Set 2, then back to Taylor mid-Set 3, then back to Blazkova again mid-Set 4. Hoecke played great, but it doesn’t appear that Coach Cook has decided who our other Middle is. Blazkova had 4 kills at .571, and 3 blocks. I didn’t think Stella’s setting was great – too many mediocre sets off of decent first passes.
NEXT UP: Our #20 Gophers host #21 Washington, on Sunday, at 1:00, at the PAV on BTN. A MUST-WIN MATCH!