I predicted weeks ago (but not 48 hours ago, when I was feeling much less confident) that the Gophs would whip Badger butt at the Pav, and they did 25-21, 25-16, 29-27. If you had told me 3 days ago that the Gophs would win 1 and lose 1 this weekend, Wisconsin at the Pav is definitely the win I would have preferred.
SET 1: The Gophs, who have not been a great first set team in recent memory, fell behind briefly mid-set at 13-16, but quickly tied it up, They traded points to 19-19, and then, behind Wooker, took control. In SET 2: From 7-7, the Gophs dominated, taking leads of 12-7, 17-11, and 23-15 before closing it out.
SET 3: After ties at 4-4 & 11-11, the Badgers pulled ahead 13-16, & 15-20, and a 3-set sweep looked unlikely. Then, behind Landfair, Shaffmaster and Booth, the Gophs scrapped their way back to a 22-22 tie. The Gophs fought off 4 Badger set points before earning their first match point opportunity at 28-27. Landfair appeared to pound one down for match point, but the Badgers challenged, claiming that they had a pancake hand under the ball. (This was a nothing-to-lose challenge.) They won the challenge, returning the score to 28-27. Then, during a wild, out-of-system challenge, Shaffmaster got the match-point kill.
I think it would be worth while to compare the Gophers performance in tonight’s sweep over the Badgers (total score 78-73), to Friday’s night sweep-loss to the Boilermakers (total score 71-82). Must have been a lot different, right? Actually, not so much.
SIMILARITIES:
- Tonight, the Gopher offense was almost entirely dependent on the left-side hitters. I had Landfair (16), Wooker (8) and Wenaas (4) with 28 of the Gophs 38 total kills, including 1 back-row kill by Landfair & 1 right-side kill each by Wenaas and Wooker, i.e., 74%. – vs 75% on Friday, both numbers higher than we want. (For comparison, the Badgers got 38% of their kills from the Left-side and major contributions from their Middles and back-row attacks.)
- And note that Wenaas once again got most (4 of 5) of her kills from the Left-side, despite the fact that she only plays Left-side for 1 half-rotation, vs 5 half-rotations on the Right-side. Booth added 1 slide-kill from the Right-side. The Gophers need to find some way to generate offense from the Right-side.
- We got a measly 5 kills from our Middles tonight, vs 4 on Friday.
- Wisconsin, like Purdue, dinked us to death. (That’s a personal observation; I don’t have stats to back it up.)
- We out-blocked the Badgers 11 to 5 (Husemann the leader here) despite the Badgers having more highly regarded Middles — but we actually out-blocked the Boilermakers 9-7 while getting swept on Friday.
- Wisconsin served aggressively, trying to force us out of system (as did Purdue), and we continued to struggle with our serve-receive, forcing Shaffmaster to bump-set at least half the time. (see below)
DIIFERENCES:
- We served better, i.e., more aggressively, without an increase in service errors. Tonight, I had us with 6 aces vs 5 service errors., whereas I had us with 1 ace vs 5 service errors against Purdue. I felt Kilkelly served better tonight.
- Wisconsin was less successful with their aggressive serving, hurting themselves with too many service errors (though Purdue made a lot too).
- Two of Friday night’s lost sets were 2-pointers; the Gophers just unable to come up with the big play when the set was on the line. Tonight, Landfair and Shaffmaster stepped up.
- I felt like Landfair was more willing to attack mediocre sets tonight than she has been. I hope that continues.
It might be that Purdue is a much better team than the Gophers, who are in turn much better than the Badgers. Or it might be that all 3 teams play better with a home crowd pumping them up. (My gut feeling is that our Gophers are better than the Badgers or the Boilermakers, but we’ll have to see as the season plays out.
Tonight I started keeping a new stat. All night, I tried to “score” the Gopher serve-receiving as “good,” i.e. easily accessible to Shaffmaster, “mediocre,” i.e, available for Shaffmaster to bump-set or McGraw to set, or “failed,” i.e., either shanked out of play, an overpass, or requiring a desperate save.
I tallied 17 “good” receives, 16 “mediocre” receives, and 6 “failed” receives. It’s hard to say what these stats means because I don’t have anything to compare them to; I haven’t seen anything like this published, for the Gophers or anyone else: they represent my entirely subjective opinions; even I have never tried to do this before; and I obviously missed a bunch, because Wisconsin served in-bounds more than 39 times. . But my gut feeling is that these are not good numbers. I feel that a championship team needs to earn “good” ratings on at least 50% of their receives, even against an aggressive serving team.
Lastly, a word about our two freshmen:
- McKenna Wucherer (The WOOKER) has now played a total of 4 college matches, and has looked every bit the #1 recruit in the country in each of them (9 kills and 4 blocks tonight). She’s a stud.
- Carter Booth has dominated 3 matches (out of 10), and looked like a freshman in the other 7. I like her a lot. I think she is going to be really good, The Gophers need her to be really good.
NEXT UP: Northwestern at the Pav, Wed, 8:00 (BTN?)