Last night, the Gophs completed their sweep of the PAC 12 Challenge with a 5 set win over Oregon at Oregon, 25-21, 23-25, 18-25, 25-20, 15-12. Once again I couldn’t watch the match (let us know if you did), but back-to-back wins over ranked teams, Stanford #14, Oregon #11 (Gophers #13), the latter on their home court, shows me something, as does a W in their first 5-set match of the season. Maureen always wants the Gophs to win in 3 sets, each 25-6 or so, but a 5-set win at Oregon, coming back from behind after 3 sets, suggests that this team does have the toughness we hadn’t seen yet this season.
Samedy was Samedy-like, with 20 kills, but Jenna Wenaas kept pace with 19 kills and 4 blocks. Katie Myers contributed 9 kills and 8 blocks. We know that Myers is a ferocious blocker, but the kills are a surprise because she rarely gets a set from her own team and her kills mostly come off of opponent overpasses — 9 would be a lot of overpasses. We must have found a way to set Myers from our side of the net (I wish I could have seen the match).
What I know of the match is that the Gophers’ offense dominated the 1st set (won by our Gophs), the Ducks’ defense dominated the 2nd set (won by Oregon), and the 3rd set was tight (14-15) before a 10-4 run by the Ducks put the Gophers down 1 set to 2 sets.
Then the fun began. The Gophs led early in the 4th set, but fell behind 15-17; if we had been watching, I imagine we would have felt a similarity to the 4-set matches Gophers have been losing. But when Coach McCutcheon (apparently) switched to a 6-2, using Bailey McMenimen (almost her first appearance this season) and (a resurrected) Taylor Landfair, The Gophs went on a 10-3 run. The deciding 5th set started 3-3 before Myers recorded 3 straight blocks to give the Gophs the lead. Oregon held tough, but 3 kills from Samedy and a close-out kill from Wenaas won the match. Rachel Kilkelly and Airi Miyabe also contributed somewhere along the way, and CC McGraw had 30 digs.
This weekend’s success evens the Gophers’ record to 3 & 3 (the losses all to highly-ranked teams) with only St. Thomas and Iowa State (these matches should be televised) left on the non-conference schedule. I still don’t know what happened to Landfair, but I hope she is back on track when the Gophs open the Big Ten season hosting Michigan on Sept, 24.