The Gophers sweep of Ball State, 25-16, 25-18, 25-15, was just as dominant as the previous evening’s 3-set sweep of Cal Poly – except that the Gophers didn’t give Set 1 to the Cardinals , like they did with the Mustangs. Through the past 6 sets, the Gophers have looked like a top 16 team taking care of business against mediocre teams. And I expect this to continue tomorrow vs the Tommies. Which raises the question, what the heck happened during that bad Set 1 vs Cal Poly? The obvious answer, which we know isn’t always right, is that we played our true-freshman Opposite Gilk the entire match.
As I mentioned in my summary of the Cal Poly match, Crowl was replaced, late in that dismal first set. I assumed, at the time, that Crowl had been benched because of her complete ineffectiveness. I saw Crowl’s dejected body language on the bench as Gilk played great, but the idea that Crowl had been injured had not occurred to me. Today however, Crowl was in sweats, presumably injured late in yesterday’s Set 1. I don’t know anything about Crowl’s injury, or how serious it is, but Gilk’s answer was clear, “It doesn’t matter much because I’m the starting Opposite.” Figuratively of course, I don’t imagine she said that to Crowl. But I think it’s true. I feel bad for Crowl, second string for 4 years, and maybe now a fifth.
Back to today’s match, the big story was the balance of Stella’s highly efficient (.523 as a team) attack:
- Hanson recorded 12 kills on 19 swings and zero errors (.632);
- Acevedo recorded 11 kills on 18 swings and 1 error (.556);
- Gilk recorded 9 kills on 18 swings and 2 errors (.389);
- Minatee recorded 7 kills on 11 swings and 2 errors (.455);
- Myers recorded 5 kills on 9 swings and zero errors (.556); and even
- Taylor recorded 4 kills on 7 swings and zero errors (.571)
Victories are more important than stats, but in an early match against a lesser team, we couldn’t ask Stella to do anything better than to get 6 of her 7 hitters (Kinney barely played) contributing. And we have every reason to believe that this sort of balance will not be a fluke, but rather a signature of our ‘25 Gophers. Okay, I’ll ask one more thing of Stella: Get your serve in (she had 3 of the Gophers’ 4 service errors).
The freshmen also led the squad in blocks, with 6 of the Gophs 8-block match. Gilk had 3, Taylor had 2 and Stella 1. I still think Taylor will break into the starting line-up eventually , but Minatee and Myers are holding the door for her.
And I would be remiss not to mention the Gophs outstanding “floor game” (i.e., the serve-receive and overall digging). Hanson recorded the only serve-receiving error of the match. (Could you imagine such a thing these last few seasons.) I thought Palabyiyk had 1 poor receive and Acevedo a couple), but our passing was terrific. Even much better teams than Ball State are going to be frustrated with this Gopher team’s ability to over and over again dig-up what looked like strong kill attempts.
Reader NP became a GopherVBRock reader last season, and was recently inspired to attend the first volleyball match of his life.
I (John, here) find it interesting that this VB-novice immediately picked up on the “team aspect.” The first bar-league VB team I organized was a bunch of guys I played bar-league softball with. Softball is a summer sport, outdoor broomball is a short season, and they weren’t interested in basketball, so I was able to talk them into VBall. Though some thought they had, I was the only one who had played real VBall, and though several were excellent athletes, we were a terrible team those first couple of years. Halfway through the season, desperate to be slightly more competitive, I brought in a “ringer” from another team I was on. At the bar after his first match (we were slaughtered as usual) he politely asked if any of them had ever played team sports. The immediate response was, “Of course, we’re an excellent softball team.” The Ringer’s response was, “So that’s a no?”
NP’s report: I attended the Gopher Volleyball game for their home opener Friday against Cal Poly. This was not only the first Gopher Volleyball game I ever attended, but probably the first volleyball game I ever attended, period. The first I can recall anyway.
Volleyball is not completely foreign to me. I have seen Olympic sand volleyball, and more recently, even caught snippets of collegiate games on TV, but not enough to have anything sink in.
So, my first takeaway from being there in person watching every serve, bump, set, and spike, is just how much of team game six verses six really is. That probably seems like an obvious point for those familiar with the nuances, but my main exposure to volleyball up to this point had been being forced to play the game as part of middle school gym. I enjoyed playing volleyball, but the inability of those I have ever had the pleasure of playing with to bump, set, spike as intended meant it was not much of a team game.
Being nine rows up from the action also made me appreciate the speed in which the game plays out, and the reactions times needed to get things flowing. This is something a bit lost on TV. I couldn’t pinpoint exactly why the first set went so badly for the gophers compared to the last three, but given how fast-paced the action is, I couldn’t help think there wasn’t much room for error– as would be true of any sport played at a really high level. Just the timing of a jump and a set seemed to require the utmost precision, and that precision being key to trajectory, which to this layman seemed to result in how returnable or not a hit would be. And that the deciding factor of a set comes down to momentum, which team was maintaining it and which team was killing it.
Lastly, I enjoyed the atmosphere in the arena. It’s not the biggest arena, there weren’t tens of thousands packed in screaming their heads off, but the energy was palpable throughout. Even following set one. It was especially palpable once the Gophers started rolling.