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-   -   It’s Championship Sunday (http://www.udpride.com/forums/showthread.php?t=36230)

BeckysTXA 11-20-2022 11:24 AM

It’s Championship Sunday
 
Championship Sunday. Match starts at noon in St Louis for the team and 1 pm Dayton-time. That’s in 2 hours as I post this, so the team is just leaving the hotel to go to the venue. Their journey on this day has begun. It’s been a longer mental journey this year than most.

The teams split the two regular season matches. But, Chris R. posted Loyola is the favorite because they were more consistent this year with only that one loss to UD in A10 matches. I would agree with that based on the regular season results when we could never get our footing and come together to play to our potential. Early it was players out every match and a new rotation every week. Later we couldn’t stop opponents’ runs nor get the traction to sustain our own. Both of these facts changed in the last two days. We weren’t perfect or playing at as high of level as would be expected with the talent we have, but we are playing the best volleyball of the season by far.

Against VCU we dropped the 3rd set. We were never really even in it. I don’t think we ever had the lead. But then we came back to dominate the 4th set and won the match 3-1. We ended the 4th set with a big 7 point run with a freshman serving. That was probably our longest point run of the season.

Yesterday, against #2 Seed Davidson, who handled us with no problem in Frericks over two days earlier in the year, we really controlled the entire match even playing from behind occasionally. They came out hot and looked in control but we chipped away with very proficient and smart plays all over the court. Towards the end of the 3rd set, we had an 18-14 lead. They went on a 5-0 run to take the lead. I was thinking, “Here we go again.” But we didn’t cave. Davidson got it to 20-19. Then we played better.

The Wildcats had a kill to score their 14th point. From 14 to 20 points (their last lead), we gave them 4 of those 6 points from our errors. But in the last 8 points scored in this match, we only made one error. And on our side of the net, we generated 5 kills and a block to score our last 6 points and win.

In the final sets in both tournament matches, Dayton raised its game and took control to close out those final sets. That’s what Flyer Volleyball has done for decades dominating the A10. That’s what we will need to do again today to win. When one of the teams gets to around 17 points in a set, we have to raise our level of play on our side of the net and play clean, not giving up points with errors. And, we have to generate our own points down the stretch. You can give up an error or two because you usually get a couple in return from your opponent. But you can’t count on the other team scoring your points, especially against good teams. You have to be able to terminate balls, get your block going and serve aggressively to keep them out of system. You can not count on gifts. You have to score your own points to win.

Dayton has the talent to do that. We have all season. What we lacked was consistency and continuity. I’m a marketing professional. I’ve always said it’s not a trend until you can sustain it for a unit of three. Three months. Three weeks. In this case three days. We will know later today if this team and program is back. Today will write the history of this season and potentially add to the Legacy of Flyer Volleyball.

Flyer Up and Bring It. It’s Championship Sunday.


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