The Gophers had little trouble in Set 1, 25-17, or Set 2, 25-14; the Gophs never trailed in either set. USU out-hustled the Gophs for a while in the middle of Set 3, turning an 11-7 lead into a 17-22 deficit. But Lydia Grote, playing in the first NCAA Tournament Match of her career, fired the Gophers up with 2 of her team-leading 10 kills and 2 of her team-leading 5 blocks, to lead the Gophers back to a Set 3 win, 25-23.
When you watch BTN a lot, as I do, you come away with the impression that the Big 10 is the strongest conference in every sport (football, hockey, wrestling, men’s and women’s basketball, etc), certainly in volleyball. But this heralded superiority doesn’t always lead to NCAA Tournament success. So it’s hard to know how a team that went 12 & 8 for 5th place in the Big 10 will fare against a team that completely dominated the Mountain West. And I know from personal experience that the bigger, stronger team doesn’t always prevail in volleyball.
But in this case, they did. The Aggies, led by their outstanding, but 5-8, star leftside, were no match for the bigger, stronger, Gophers. The Jeff Day story in this morning’s Strib said that the Aggies were a strong-serving team, exactly the kind of team that has given the Gophs trouble all season. But you wouldn’t have guessed it watching this match. I think the Aggies had 4 aces (vs 9 for the Gophs), but one of the 4 hit the tape and trickled over. I only counted 3 bad receives, 2 by Wooker and 1 by Palabyik.
Either a Mountain West Champ is no match for a 5th place Big 10 team,OR the Gophers really are peaking. We’ll find out tomorrow at 6:30, likely against a top-ten Creighton team, in Creighton’s gym.