No broadcast either. I appreciate readers like R.A., C.B., K.T. & M.G. who came up with suggestions for watching or at least listening to tonight’s match versus the Stanford ???. I thought it was “The Cardinal,” singular, but they don’t wear real red and their logo features a pine tree, so ???
Anyway, the Gophers had surprisingly little trouble, winning 25-20, 25-18, 25-17; set-point in all 3 sets coming on Stanford errors. We lost the first point in one of the sets, but otherwise never trailed at any point in the match. This was not the Stanford Team that won 3 National Championships in 4 years (2016, 2018, 2019) behind Kathryn Plummer.
Watching BTN, one hears constant reports that the Big Ten is the strongest Volleyball, Basketball, Football, Hockey, Wrestling, etc, conference in the country, but when the playoffs come around it often turns out not quite true. But the Gophers needed 5 sets to beat 9th place Michigan at the Pav, and not only will all 5 seeded Big Ten Teams be joining the Gophers in the Sweet Sixteen, but so will unseeded Illinois, who knocked off the #7 overall seed Kentucky. So maybe the Big Ten is pretty strong.
One example of Stanford’s inferiority to most Big Ten Teams is that the Gophers, normally terrible at dinking, averaging about 1 point per match, scored 6 points in 3 sets against Stanford. Maybe we suddenly got better at dinking?
As usual, our “pins” accounted for most of our offense. The official stats aren’t up yet, but I had Samedy with 16 kills (including 3 dinks), Wenaas with 13 kills (including 3 dinks), and Miyabe with 10 kills (no dinks that I can recall). But the rest contributed also, I had Husemann with 3 kills and 2 blocks, Myers with a kill, a block, and an ace, and Shaffmaster with 2 kills and 2 aces.
And the Gophers, missing McGraw, who was rated the 2nd best libero in the Big Ten, and playing MIyabe in all 6 rotations, alongside Kilkelly and Wenaas in the receive, had surprisingly little trouble handling Stanford’s serves. Can we really be that good?
Hard to find much wrong with the Gophers performance tonight. But I’ll try. I’ve mentioned this before, but we are terrible at putting away our opponents overpasses. It seems to me that a strong front line ought to hit at least .750 on overpasses (I’d swear the Tapp Sisters used to hit about .900), but this year’s Gophers are lucky to hit .100 on overpasses.
But as predicted here, the Gophers are once again a Sweet Sixteen Team. And on our way to play the #5 seed Baylor, who beat us in 4-sets (also at Madison) back in August. If the Gophers play as well as they did tonight, we’ve got a chance.