Our Gophers got away with slow starts against High Point, and last month against TCU, but #14 ranked Creighton was too good for the Gophers to come back after spotting the Blue Jays a 9-23 lead in Set 1, a 7-20 lead in Set 3, and a 1-9 lead in Set 5. Creighton won the hard-fought match, 15-25, 25-16, 20-25, 25-22, and 15-9.
I recently said it was too soon to compare Lydia Grote with Steph Samedy, but Grote put up Samedy-like numbers against Creighton, keeping the Gophers in the match with 20 kills at a .474 clip. Landfair and The Wooker had 9 and 7 kills, respectively – on the same # of sets as fed to Grote. Wooker has had some strong matches, but the wasn’t one of them; in Set 5, after 3 consecutive hitting errors, Coach Cook actually benched Wooker for Julia Hanson, Hanson wasn’t any better.
And we’re still waiting for the real Landfair to appear. I will say, Landfair passed better against Creighton than she has in some matches. She had 3 official serve-receive errors (about her avg for a 5-set match), but not as many “poor” receives as usual. And Landfair had her serve going, with a career-high 5 aces, vs 3 service-errors, including 4 consecutive aces in Set 3, giving the Gophers life when they barely had a pulse. Led by Landfair, the Gophs had 11 aces for the match, vs 12 service-errors. I’ll take that any day.
The big drama was Shaffmaster getting injured, early, in a tight Set 4. Shaffmaster, favoring her right knee all season, went down hard and didn’t get up. Eventually, she was helped off the court and led to the locker room. Back-up Setter Elise McGhie played the rest of Set 4. There is a reason McGhie is the back-up; she might be quicker than Shaffmaster, but her hands are not as good – and she can’t block at all. But McGhie played her heart out, and the loss of Shaffmaster seemed to inspire the whole team to hang on for the Set 4 win.
McGhie started Set 5 in the serving position. Coach Cook subbed Shaffmaster back in when our setter-position rotated to the front row (I assume that was the plan going into Set 5), but by then we were down 1-9. Not really McGhie’s fault; more a case of poor receiving and poor hitting.
One bright note was Phoebe Awoleye getting 5 kills. Five kills in 5 sets isn’t great, but I think it was her best offensive performance of the season (Awoleye has been our best blocker so far). And 4 of the 5 were “quicks;” coming into tonight’s match, I don’t think she had 4 kills off quick-sets all season.
Arica Davis, who didn’t play at all last weekend vs Oregon & Stanford, but was back Thursday vs Highpoint, and has been our most effective offensive Middle, matched Owoleye. But Davis can’t block at all.
I don’t want to take anything away from Creighton. This was high-quality volleyball between 2 good teams, especially the digging and out-of-system play on both sides of the court. I wouldn’t be shocked to see these two teams play again in the NCAAs. But Creighton was the better team tonight.
NEXT UP: Conference Opener at Iowa, on Thursday, on FS1.
I expect to put up a non-conference review / Big 10 Preview before the Iowa match.