I said at the end of my write-up of the SDSU match, and again in my Big Ten Preview, that tonight’s Big Ten Opener was a must-win match. My logic was that with 10 of our Big Ten opponents nationally ranked, we need to sweep the 7 who aren’t ranked – Illinois being one of them.
But we lost in four, 22-25, 25-14, 18-25 & 22-25. As the scores suggest, Sets 2 and 3 were sort of lop-sided (the Gophs led 5-2 in Set 3, but fell behind 9-12 and never threatened after that). Sets 1 and 4 were full of drama.
Set 1: Illinois started the match with a pair of aces. Then, with the score about 5-5, Wooker went down. They didn’t show her going down, and my first thought was that her back went out. The BTN+ announcer said it was her knee, but who trusts a BTN+ announcer? After a delay, Wooker got up, and had two quick kills. We outhit the Illini decisively in Set 1, something like 15 to 8 – difficult to lose a set like that. But we gave away the set, and ultimately the match, with horrendous serving: zero aces vs 6 errors in Set 1.
Set 4: With the set tied at 5-5, we got caught in our weakest rotation – the receive where Kinney is hitting right-side (she’s stronger left-side), Taylor Middle, and Gilk is hitting left-side, where she is less effective – and Stella reluctant to feed her. I’ve been bragging about Wooker’s back-row hitting, and she should be an option from back-row in this rotation,. But I think she was 0 for 2 from back-row tonight. We fell behind 7-10 before, ironically, Gilk nailed a left-side kill to escape the rotation. From there, we basically traded side-outs until falling behind 16-20. Facing defeat, we rallied to take a 22-21 lead, mostly with Garr serving behind a front-row of Wooker, Taylor and Gilk. I felt we were headed for a Set 5 – until we weren’t.
For the match, we outhit Illinois 57 to 48. With decent balance: Wooker, another strong match, had 18, Kinney 15, Gilk 11, Taylor 8 and Hoecke 5. This was a 2026 offensive breakout for Taylor (who started, I wasn’t even sure she would) – 8 kills at a .400 clip in 4 sets, vs 15 kills at a .156 clip in 16 non-conference sets. But on defense, a step backward for Taylor – she had 23 blocks in her 16 non-conference sets, but only 1 block in 4 sets tonight.
Collectively, our 5 primary hitters hit .483. But it’s silly to say we out-played Illinois except for serving, because serving is part of volleyball.
I think it is fair to say that the Gopher coaching staff hasn’t yet figured out who our best servers are. Garr, our best server during the non-conference had 3 aces vs 2 errors. (Garr almost had a 4th ace but for a 3rd-touch, out-of-bounds-kick-save by Illinois.) Wooker, Palabiyik and Stella, all of whom are guaranteed to be among our 6 servers in every match, had a combined 2 aces vs 4 errors. The rest of the team, including Gilk, Thibault and Lee – none of whom have to serve, combined for zero aces and 5 errors. Acevedo looks healthy enough to serve, not sure why she isn’t.
Twice, in Set 1 and again in Set 2, we had 3 consecutive service-errors (Gilk-Wooker-Lee, and later Wooker-Lee-Stella, I think). When I coached club volleyball, I preached to my team that their most important serves of the season were those following two service errors by their teammates. You cannot, under any circumstances, miss a third consecutive serve!
I thought that Palabiyik had a very good match digging – and a poor night on serve-receive.
NEXT UP: #20-ranked Oregon, Saturday, 6:00, at the PAV, on BTN+
If you haven’t already seen them, scroll down and check out my
NON-CONFERENCE WRAP-UP and BIG TEN PREVIEW
I wrote them Tuesday but couldn’t post them until midday today because I was out of town.