Our Gophers, who I felt were on a tipping point going into today’s match vs Ohio State at the Pav, tipped the right way, sweeping the Buckeyes 25-22, 25-21 & 25-14. The Buckeyes are not very good, and maybe we should have beaten them more easily, but at least we swept them. Which might help with our confidence heading into a gauntlet of 9 very tough games. (We’ll be the underdog in all 9.)
In a recent post I had suggested that we needed Leadership from inside the team, and suggested Hanson as a likely source given that she is our best player and also our most senior player. But maybe not the right personality type? I don’t have any inside info as to what was said by whom or to whom since last Wednesday’s fiasco, but Hanson had a big match today, so there’s that.
Specifically, Hanson had 16 kills (3 back-row) on 25 swings, with 2 errors, for an amazing .560 hitting percentage. As impressive as the .560 was, her percentage on good sets was surely higher as one of her hitting errors and many of her non-kills were dink-attempts off poor sets. I’d say she was about 1 for 6 on dinks. (I’m making this up, but Hanson must have been around .800 on good sets.)
The other bright spot was our serving, especially from Kinney and Garr. Kinney started the match with an ace, and finished the match with 4 aces and no serving errors! I had previously suggested that she might be a strong server – but that was based on a small sample. Garr had 2 aces and no errors, but she also served a ton of points. Garr was aided in this by serving behind a front row of Hanson, Gilk and Myers. Gilk started slow, but finished with a second-best 8 kills, and passed well.
If one wanted to look for negatives, in a close win over a bad team, they would include:
- Barely any offense from our Middles during Sets 1 & 2. Not necessarily our Middles’ fault, you can’t generate offense if Stella doesn’t set you. And not necessarily Stella’s fault – hard to set our Middles without a good first pass, which she wasn’t getting. And
- Kinney had 4 of her 5 match-kills in Set 1 (when we needed it) and then disappeared as a hitter. Kinney continued to serve well, but finished the match with a hitting percentage of zero (meaning she had 5 hitting errors to nullify her kills).
- We won’t beat good teams with offense only from Hanson, no matter how well she plays.
THE ROAD AHEAD IS BRUTAL:
Oregon at Oregon (Fri, 10/17, 8:00, BTN+),
Washington at Washington (Sat. 10/18, 9:00 BTN+),
# 20 ranked Indiana at Indiana (Fri, 10/24, 5:00, BTN),
# 12 ranked Purdue at Purdue (Sun. 10/26, Noon, BTN+)
# 28 ranked Illinois at the Pav (Wed 10/29, 7:00, BTN)
#22 ranked USC at the Pav (Sat, 11/1, TBA, BTN+)
#7 ranked Wisconsin at Wisconsin (Wed, 11/5, 7;00, FS1)
#1 ranked Nebraska, at the Pav (Sat, 11/8, 2:30, Peacock)
#19 ranked Penn State, at the Pav, Fri, 11/14, 7:00, BTN)
WHEW! It gets a little easier after these 9 matches, but it may not matter if these freshmen don’t pick it up fast. Winning 4 of the 9 would be very encouraging.