[For the second time this season, I finished my story of the match just after midnight (the match didn’t end until almost 11, and I’m a slow typist — maybe I should switch to chat-bot), only to learn that my blog-host was under-going maintenance (apparently they think midnight central-time is a good time for that, GopherVBallRocks gets no respect). “Try again in a few minutes,” the screen says. Nope, I went to bed.]
Two weeks ago, when Oregon routed us in 3 sets, on our home court, I described our Gophers as “overmatched.” But the Badgers seem to bring out the best in the ’24 Gophs . Back in September, we beat the Badgers at the Pav in 5 sets, winning the fifth set 18-16. Tonight in Madison, the Badgers evened the series, 21-25, 25-12, 25-22, 20-25 & 18-20! If you like sports, you can’t find better entertainment than watching Gopher v Badger VBall.
And as was true at the Pav, the Gophs won the composite score. It surprises me, a little, that in the 413 points contested between these two teams over ten sets, our relatively undersized Gophs (Gopher Pins, Hanson, Grote and Wooker, all 6-1, and in one rotation, the Badgers’ front line is 6-4 2023 Player of the Year Sarah Franklin, 6-7 former Gopher Carter Booth, and 6-9 Anna Smrek) won 211 of them. Our hitters were not intimidated. (Maybe a bit in Set 4, too much dinking for my taste, and Wooker the only one any good at it.) Our trio all posted double-digit kills, Hanson 20, Grote 17 and Wooker 15, whereas only Badger Franklin (19) had at least 15. The Badgers have more offensive weapons than we do, but for the second time this year, we out-hit the towering Badgers .208 to .158.
How did we keep it so close? For one thing, Shaffmaster and Palbiyik are clearly superior to their Badger counterparts Fuerbringer and Damrow. These Badgers are both freshmen, and will surely be better next year, but this freshmen combo will likely prevent this weapon-rich Badger Team from reaching this year’s Final Four. Plus Minatee, who played great against the much bigger Wisconsin Middles in September, but has been close to useless for the past 3 or 4 weeks, once again had a strong match (6 kills & 4 blocks).
Both teams made miraculous saves, leading to dozens of long rallies, but Wisconsin just a few more? And Wisconsin’s ace to service error to receiving error ratio was just slightly better than ours – very much the difference in Set 1, too many service errors by Shaffmaster & Hanson) and Set 4 (too many receiving errors by Acevedo. Interstingly,, Acevedo also played most of the September win over the Badgers.
UP NEXT: The Iowegians, at the Pav, Saturday, 7:30, BTN+ Hint: The Gophers will sweep.