Friday night, our #13 ranked Gophers knocked off #14 Stanford, in Eugene, Ore., 25-22, 19-25, 25-16, 25-17 – the Gophs first win this season vs a ranked opponent. I didn’t see the match, love to hear from anyone who did, but from what I can tell:
Steph Samedy brought a typical Samedy performance, 20 kills, 14 digs and 3 blocks. (Where would we be without covid-bonus-year Samedy?) Jenna Wenaas, Airi Miyabe, CC McGraw and Katie Myers also played well. Miyabe apparently played left-side hitter in place of Taylor Landfair, who once again did not play. (Landfair was present and dressed – anyone have a theory what’s up with Landfair?) Coach McCutcheon was quoted as being proud of the team’s consistency throughout the match.
So far this season, our Gophers have struggled to win the close sets, so the 25-22 first set was likely a key to the match victory. The teams were tied at seven; the Gophs jumped out to leads of 14-10, 20-13 and 23-19; but Standford cut the lead to 23-22 before making a service error and a hitting error to hand the set to the Gophers. Good to see the win, and service & hitting errors are part of the game; but I would feel better if the Gophs had “won” rather than Stanford losing.
Set 2 was tied 7-7 & 15-15, before Stanford won. But the Gophers dominated sets 3 & 4, trailing 2-3 in set 4, but otherwise leading wire-to-wire in both sets.
Great to notch the win over a marquee team, but without being able to watch, it’s hard to know how good Stanford is. Maybe we’ll know more after tonight’s match at Oregon. (Also not viewable locally, to my knowledge.)