VB midweek vs ORU

[psycHOGlogist]

Last year the Hogs lost an embarrassing (both because of the result and because of how we played) match to the ... whatever the ORU mascot is... on the road in Tulsa.

This year's match is back in Barnhill, and the result is reversed, with the Hogs sweeping. ORU is sort of a tough team to play because they do some things well, have a great hitter (senior Laura Milos), and sometimes they just do weird stuff that surprisingly seems to work. We had fairly big leads (3-5 pts) in each set, but let ORU hang around, so that each set ended up being reasonably close. We had more consistency and firepower when it mattered, though, for the 25-20, 25-22, 25-21 win.

Leading the offense were (surprise!) Pilar Victoria with 19 kills (.368 efficiency) and 12 digs. Frosh Hailey Dirrigl had her best hitting match of the year, I think, with 12 kills (.385). Rippee dished out 46 assists in 3 sets, which is really a very nice number (15+/set is crazy good), and Fr Liz Pamphile plastered some very big kills at clutch moments, especially in the 3rd set to help seal the deal. Rippee also had 10 digs to score another double-double. Good win.

Next up - trip out west to Santa Barbara to play Yale, USC-W, and the host Gauchos. I am hoping we come away with another 2 W's, but beating USCB on their home floor could be tough.

WPS!!!

[psycHOGlogist]

The offense is working rather well, and the floor defense has been good on hard hit balls, especially, but ORU had a decent amount of success hitting tip shots right over the block on us, so we may see teams try to use that against us more often. Our blocking numbers are also a little bit too low to be considered average, at this point. I hope that is going to be a focus of the team's development over the season. With young teams, blocking is something that usually improves over the course of the year.

[flippinhogmana]

the women are looking good this year and Pilar is an absolute tigress and star.  Thanks for your reports.