VB Weekend in Santa Barbara

[psycHOGlogist]

The Hogs headed out to lovely Santa Barbara for a tough weekend tournament with one very strong and two pretty decent teams -- USC (the one in Los Angeles), Yale, and the host UCSB Gauchos.

We opened with two matches today, first against the Women of Troy and then the Bulldogs from Yale.

We played a very tough, scrappy match against USC and ended up losing in 5. Really a heartbreaker. We were up 2 - 1 in sets and leading the fourth set 21-18 before USC came back to assert themselves and take the fourth set 26-24. We never really got up off the mat in game 5 and lost 15-9. Still, as tough as it was to lose this match, it's got to give the team a lot of confidence. USC is ranked #19, and we gave them everything they could handle and then some. We looked very competitive with them. We blocked extremely well, played solid defense, and got some good offensive production from Pilar and Fr Hailey Dirrigl. Reagan Robinson had a pretty tough match (USC's block is really big and really good), and she was subbed out in the later sets in favor of Fr Logan Brown, who didn't put up big numbers but who, I thought, acquitted herself rather well (and was an improvement over Robinson). Fr Liz Pamphile led the team in blocking with 7. All in all, a very good match, despite the loss.

About 30 minutes later, we took the court against Yale. We showed a few effects from the USC match early on, looking sloppy and making some errors. Yale got to set point, but we rallied to tie it at 24. Then we traded points back and forth for some time until we finally put a couple points together, earning the 33-31 set victory on a Rippee-O'Brien block. We woke up a bit at that point and took the 2nd and 3rd sets more easily, -18, -17. It was a very efficient offensive performance for us. Overall, the team hit .348 (a whopping .586 in set 3), and four different players had double digit kills (Victoria, Dirrigl, Pamphile, and Robinson), something that hasn't happened for a long time, I'll bet. Pilar was not her normal efficient self -- she took 71 swings against USC, and she was worn out -- but Pamphile hit for .625 efficiency (12 kills), Dirrigl for .500 (13 kills), and O'Brien for .566 (6 kills). Very good match in terms of offensive numbers.

Tomorrow (Sat) night we play UCSB, who lost to Yale earlier today in 4 very close sets. UCSB has a really, really good hitter, but the rest of the team doesn't give her the support that our young hitters give Pilar. Should be a good match.

We are now 7-2 on the year, a good bit ahead of where I thought we'd be with respect to W-L record. WPS!

[hawgbawb]

Thanks and good luck today.

[psycHOGlogist]

Hogs get a nice, if sloppy, 5 set win over the host Gauchos tonight. Pilar had her second 30+ kill performance of the season, clobbering 32 kills on 66 swings. Freshmen Pamphile and Dirrigl were also in double digit kills. Pamphile, Rippee, and O'Brien all had 3 blocks.

Was a bit of a see-saw match; we played awful in set 1, but turned it around in sets 2 and 3 to take the 2-1 lead. We were up in set 4, but UCSB's block got hot and and they rallied to take it ... shades of the USC match. Today, however, we hung tough at the beginning of set 5 and gradually pulled away to take it 15-11. Another confidence booster.

Also, it was the second match in a row where Watson had to take out Reagan Robinson and put in Fr Logan Brown. Robinson has really struggled badly in serve receive, and Brown is pretty capable in that regard.

A trip to Dallas to play SMU and Sam Houston State is next. WPS!