Volleyball question #2

[ricepig]

Ok, I don't keep up that close with it, but have the VB twitter account in my timeline, what's up? We seem to really be struggling, new coach, new players, what?

[psycHOGlogist]

1. Our best player, Pilar Victoria, has still not played a point this year. We are not a particularly good team without her.

2. The team is also clearly struggling with adjusting to the new staff. He has introduced some new techniques that the team is not picking up all that well. There are so many seniors on this squad that it's a lot to ask to have them make a lot of adjustments in a season they were really looking forward to.

3. The senior class, overall, is not particularly mentally tough. They are incredibly inconsistent and have a great deal of difficulty keeping leads and closing out games (case in point, today's first set against So Miss).

I don't know how serious Victoria's injury is, but if she doesn't play tomorrow or Tuesday, she will have missed the entire pre-season. If we don't beat UMKC tomorrow (not a gimme, obviously) and/or Oral Roberts on Tuesday (a game we should win), the season will for all intents and purposes be over. I don't know if Victoria is interested, but I'd consider redshirting her if so.

It's been an incredibly unfortunate and disappointing season so far. I think if Victoria were healthy, we'd be at least .500 and still have a chance to make some noise in the conference season. But if wishes were horses ...

[ricepig]

Ok, thanks. Like I said, I don't watch a lot of VB, but much prefer it to women's BB. I know, save your ink, but VB is played above the net and fast based, the other.......

[psycHOGlogist]

Volleyball is my favorite sport, so you won't get an argument from me!

[psycHOGlogist]

Very nice win over UMKC today in 4 sets, but one that also illustrates my points, I think.

This is a game (like So Miss, imo) that we SHOULD have won. We lost first set 25-22, but 7 of UMKC's first 13 points came off of our errors - and I stopped keeping track at that point. We also didn't record a single block - which a team with our physicality and height should do against a shorter, less dynamic team.

In the rest of the match, while we didn't play flawless volleyball, we significantly cut down on errors and hit with outstanding efficiency - over .300 for the match after a meh first set. And we recorded something like 15 blocks in the last 3 sets -- which we won -15, -18, and -16. Pretty dominating.

That's what this team is capable of, but it's just struggling to find consistency, imo. Hope this helps them turn a corner. We'll see Tuesday against ORU, and then next Sunday against a very beatable LSU team in Baton Rouge.

GHG!

[psycHOGlogist]

We had a terrible away loss to Oral Roberts in the last non-conference match of the year, but turned around and beat LSU on the road 3-0 -- by some fairly lopsided scores -- to open the SEC schedule. We actually played pretty well - very few errors to give LSU easy points. This Friday's match against Mizzou should be interesting.

The LSU announcers did say that Pilar will miss the ENTIRE season this year and come back for a redshirt senior season this year. That is awful news for the team, but potentially good news for Pilar. Next year's team will be VERY young and need some veteran leadership, which she can provide.