Day 2 - Missouri St Fall Invitation Preview

There will be seven matches played between five teams in this tournament before it’s finished and like the children’s game Musical Chairs, everybody seems to be taking their turn at coming up short (aka ending up with no chair). The exception might be the biggest surprise of the weekend, the SMU Mustangs.

SMU surprised everyone by sweeping the Flyers 3-0 Friday morning and doing the same later that day to host Missouri St. With only Weber St left on their dance card, it looks like SMU will walk away the clear winner. A sweep of Weber St should be expected. Everyone else appears to be fighting for chairs to stay in the NCAA At-Large game that plays out in November.

On Thursday night, Missouri St “upset” Kansas St., 3-2. On Friday, Kansas St also lost to Weber St., 3-1, and then fell to Dayton that evening in another tough 5-set battle, 3-2. Kansas St. headed home after going 0-3. Take note, it could be worse for UD. The Wildcats have run out of chairs this weekend. The Flyers have not.

Today, UD plays Missouri St. Both teams are 1-1 this weekend. Both losses are sweeps coming at the hands of SMU. Additionally, both teams’ win this weekend is a 5-set battle against Kansas St. Today’s UD-Missouri St. match should be interesting.

Missouri State - Saturday, September 1 @ 1:30 pm

Dayton needs to make a statement they are playing at a high level, this weekend or next, before heading into conference play. That hasn’t happened yet and continues to be a work in progress. But there have been some improvements. Blocking is improving…some. Against SMU it was excellent – 11 blocks in three sets – averaging 3.67/set. We were at 1.79/set coming into the weekend, which is low for a Flyer team. The archives on daytonflyers.com go back to 2003, and no team has ever averaged less than 2.0 blocks per set in any given season. Two teams were basically at 2.0, and two other teams were basically at 3.0. The other years we were mid-twos. The Flyers have always been a good blocking team. It’s been a struggle this year. Against Kansas St, we slipped back to 1.80 blocks per set. For the weekend we sit at 2.5/set – an improvement, but we will need a big block against Missouri St. today to keep the trend rising.

Service Errors – we only had two against SMU in three sets and seven against Kansas St. in five sets, for a total of 9 in 8 sets…just over 1.1 per set. That is a huge improvement over the average of 2.9/set the team had going into the weekend. However, without video for those matches, it’s hard to say if we got our serving more “under-control” or if we backed off the degree of aggressiveness. You have to continue to serve aggressive to keep good teams out-of-system. There will be some service errors. It’s a tradeoff.

Although this isn’t a pure indicator of how aggressive we were serving yesterday, it is some indicator we didn’t dial it way back. We had a lot of aces. Going into the weekend, we averaged 1.3 aces/set. In the two matches yesterday we averaged 2.1 per set. Against Missouri St. today, our serve game is something to watch. This match will be streamed.

We also won another tough 5-set match. Do not underestimate the value of that experience. We get to that VCU match in November, the only time we play VCU in the regular season, and we may need that experience. If we get to the NCAAs second round, playing for a trip to the Sweet 16, we may need that experience. We are learning how to win these matches…winning our last two after dropping the first two.

What we didn’t do well in either match yesterday, was terminate balls. As a team we hit .134 and .190 in those matches. The good teams are hitting close to .300 or better for the season. A couple things to look at here. First when hitting percentages are low, it’s easy to think the hitters need to improve. That isn’t necessarily the case. How successful a team is at terminating balls depends on EVERY TOUCH on your side of the net. The first touch has to be a good pass, which gives the setter a chance to use all of her hitters so the defense does not know where the ball is going and can’t cheat over to stop the attack. The pass can come off of serve receive or a dig, but getting it to the setter somewhere within about a four or five-foot square of the setting position – at the net, just to the right of center court - allows the setter to read the defense and send the ball to the open hitter.

The second touch is usually the set. But both Bridget Doherty and Brooke Westbeld have been effective this season reading the defenses and executing the setter dump for points. Against Michigan, who was one of the best “scrappy” teams we have seen and who just flat-out got to balls you thought no one could dig up, Brooke went 5 for 15 and Bridget 2 for 7 on dumps. Against Kansas St, again, they both did a good job deploying a quick setter attack. Brooke going 5 for 9 and Bridget 3 for 6. However, against SMU, both setters went 0-2. Not a lot of attempts and SMU covered the ones we did attempt. For a team that is struggling to terminate points, the quick setter dump is something we need to keep defenses honest and it opens up the other hitters. Our setters also need to execute a long-setter dump that hits the back corners of the court when defenders cheat up to cover their short dumps. One of the best setters UD ever had that could hit those corners for a point was Erin Schroeder back in 2007 and 2008.

Against Missouri St. we are going to need to get our hitters going. SMU shut down Jamie Peterson. Every team we play the rest of the year will try to shut down Jamie. It was nice to see her bounce back against Kansas St. taking 69 swings and collecting 22 kills at a .261 clip. For a sophomore OH swinging out of all six rotations, that is a good day at the office. Other hitters played well for one match, but not both. Rachael Fara hit well against SMU. Amelia Moore hit well against Kansas St. (Again, low hitting percentages are a result of all touches on your side of the net…not just the final touch by the hitter.) The challenge is to get most of your hitters going and terminating points every match. We haven’t been able to do that yet this year. It’s hard to beat a team if they have three hitters terminating well in a match. One of those hitters needs to be one of your left OHs because so many sets get sent to the left side. You need one of your middles hot because of the angles hitting from the center of the net, middles have a higher percentage that OHs. And, if you have a middle that can run the slide, it’s a huge advantage because the block has to guess where to set up along the net to stop it. The middle’s contact point is always a guess on the slide. After that, any other hitter – your right side or your other left OH or your other middle. Just get three hitters going and you will be hard to stop. We haven’t been able to do that well this year. Today would be a good day to start.

Finally, we will need to continue to work on cleaning up our side of the net. We make errors in “bunches” and at critical points in sets. This allows teams to come from behind when we have a lead or to put separation between us and pull away. A lot of errors happen with mental lapses. We have the physical talent. Do we have the ability to lock-in and focus for a greater percentage of each set to secure the win? Youth may be an underlying factor here. The following players have less than two years of “starting” collegiate volleyball experience. Some have less than one. Amelia, Jamie, Rachael, Olivia, Carissa, Maura, Liz, Mikaylah, and technically Sierra is on that list. The only two players in our rotation that can say they have close to two years of rotation experience are Brooke and Bridget. There are no four-year starters on this team. There are no three-year starters on this team. That’s a pretty amazing fact that somehow got over-looked while evaluating the roster in pre-season…starting with me. That 2010 team, that is considered the best all-time, had Lindsay Fletemier and Amanda Cowdrey in their 4th starting year. It had Becky Novacek and Yvonne Martin in their 3rd starting year. And, it had three others in their 2nd. This year we have two in their 2nd starting year. Hugely talented players that just need seasoning and more experience. That lack of playing experience is showing up in errors.

And therein lies a critical fact that somehow got over looked, probably by the coaches, players, parents, fans…and certainly me. We haven’t come up the lone player in Musical Chairs that has no chair. We still have a seat in the game. We need more seasoning. More experience. We need to get more of our hitters going each match. We need to learn how to eliminate errors and strengthen our mental game. We need to continue to Prepare. Play. Learn. All the team goals are still in play.