25-15, 24-26, 25-17 & 25-14. We shouldn’t complain too loud about a 4-set win, but it felt like the Gophers, who won the total match score 99 to 72, were significantly better than SDU, and shouldn’t have let Set 2 get away. We led wire-to-wire in Sets 1, 3 & 4 , but in Set 2, we let the Coyotes get ahead early, 2-6, 5-9 & 7-12. Mid Set 2, we rode Wooker and Hoecke to leads of 17-14 & 21-18, and I felt we were going to win the set. But we didn’t.
In the earlier match (which I did not see), the Washington Huskies convincingly swept the SDSU Jackrabbits. I’m hoping we can do that when we play the Jackrabbits tomorrow.
Individually, another big match for the Wooker. I had her with 25 kills, including 3 from the back-row, plus 3 service-aces (vs 1 service-error) and several nice digs. And I thought Wooker could have had 27 or 28 kills if she hadn’t been robbed repeatedly by the Coyote’s excellent Libero. A very strong match by Wooker.
Kinney, 12 kills, Hoecke, 10 kills, and Gilk, 8 kills plus 3 service-aces, also played well. I felt our serving was sub-par, 7 aces vs 12 errors – but our serve-receive was pretty good.
Taylor continues to struggle offensively, with 2 kills and 3 errors on 11 swings – a minus .091 percentage. I had Taylor with 3 blocks (officially 4), but given that Taylor had a significant height advantage over both Coyote Middles, I expected more from her on offense. Taylor and Hoecke both dinked more than I like to see, especially since neither is good at it. (Wooker and Kinney are effective on off-speed hits.) The frequent dinking by both of our Middles suggests that their timing with Stella isn’t where it needs to be. At least not yet.
TOMORROW: South Dakota State at 2:30, on MIDCO Sports Plus. If any readers were able to watch tonight’s or tomorrow’s matches on MIDCO Sports Plus, let me know.
READERS RESPOND
Reader C.B. points out that I wasn’t alone in being mistaken about the start-time of last Friday’s match. Wanting to make sure he could still find BTN +, he logged on at 5:42 – and was informed that, “The match will begin in 78 minutes.” So C.B. took a shower and missed the first two sets.