I had failed to notice (until multiple GopherVBallRocks readers mentioned it to me) that the MSU Spartans came into the match with a perfect 10 & 0 record. The catch was that they hadn’t played anyone very good. Anyway, the Gophs made quick work of Sparty, 25-16, 26-24, 25-18. Set 2 was close, at one point we trailed 9-15, but even then I felt, accurately as it turned out, that we would win the set.
Once again, the victory reflected balanced scoring, I had
- Hanson with 11 kills (and 3 aces)
- Acevedo with 10 kills
- Myers with 6 kills (all slides)
- Gilk (who subbed in for Kinney early in Set 2) with 4 kills
- Kinney with 3 kills, and
- Taylor with 3 kills and 3 blocks.
And a Team Hitting percentage of .389
Speaking of Taylor, I’m not sure she would be getting court-time yet if Minatee hadn’t gotten injured, but tonight we saw exactly the Taylor I was hoping to see. By that I mean, she’s a freshman, making freshman mistakes. (E.G., she got whistled for reaching over the net to interfere with a Sparty set, and she threw a free ball back to Sparty versus passing it to Stella.) But she is very active at the net getting lots of no-kill blocks and intimidating the Sparty hitters.
Speaking of freshman struggles, Garr didn’t have a perfect night either, especially on serve-receive. She shanked a couple of receives, and let two go by that hit the line. (Someone in section 110 said that her teammates were screaming “OUT” on both.)
I liked our serving. We had 4 Aces vs 5 service-errors. Obviously we’d prefer that ratio to tilt the other way, but aside from the aces & errors, I felt we put a lot of pressure on Sparty’s receive all night.
Interesting that Gilk came in for Kinney. I like Kinney and I thought we had settled on Kinney as our Opposite. But after a couple of hitting errors she got the early hook. I like Gilk too, and she wasted no time getting her first kill. I’m glad we have both of them.
NEXT UP: RUTGERS, at the Pav, 2:00 on Sunday.
The Gophs are on an 11-match win streak, and I like our chances of extending it to 12.