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Tough Losses
Tough Losses
UDBrian
Published by UDBrian
10-11-2013
Tough Losses

The UD volleyball team has struggled the past two weeks. The team had shown a lot of improvement in the Nebraska tournament and looked forward to VCU visiting the Frerick's Center. VCU had a great non conference season and it seemed obvious that these two teams were the favorites to win the A10.


UD won set one 25-21 and lost a great second set 28-26. The Flyers came back after intermission and completely dominated set three 25-14. It appeared that they were ready to finish the match and have a great victory. Unfortunately VCU won set 4 25-23 while holding UD to a .049 hitting percentage. The fifth set could have gone either way but UD lost 15 - 13. It was a tough loss but everyone knew before the match that this wasn't going to be easy. The Flyers played good defense and held down VCU's big outside hitter Kriskova.


The next visitor to the Frerick's Center would be St Louis. St Louis did not have a great non conference season and I think myself and other fans expected a routine victory.


The St Louis match started off well with UD winning the first sets and holding St Louis to -.069 and .122 hitting percentages. But everything started to unravel after intermission. St Louis outplayed the Flyers in the final three sets hitting .371, .278 and .533 (ouch). The Flyers almost never lose in the Frerick's Center and this was a tough loss to a rival team.


In a strange scheduling anomally the Flyers would travel to VCU again the next weekend after playing La Salle on Friday. When the play started on Friday Flyer fans were wondering what happened. Shayne Brown was playing left outside hitter and Megan was playing on the right side. The Flyers dominated La Salle in three sets with Shayne Brown haivng 14 kills while hitting .407! Great first game on the left outside Shayne!


The Flyers were ready to play VCU as Flyer fans discussed the lineup changes and whether other changes might occur on Sunday.

The match start with the same lineups from Friday night and VCU dominated the first set hitting .414. The Flyers won set 2 outhitting VCU .286 to .182. Everything looked good heading into intermission but the Flyers could not keep up with VCU's offense as they were outhit .222 to .128 and then .485 (ouch) to .194 in the final set. It is alarming to play a match and have two sets where the other team hits over .400. The Flyers held VCU's big outside hitter Kriskova down the first time they played but last weekend she was too much having 22 kills while hitting .356.


I asked coach Affolder about the lineup changes which occured last weekend and who played well.


"Alaina Turner is out indefinitely with a right shoulder/arm injury, thus we were in a situation where we had to look at a different lineup. This happened on Wednesday during practice, and we left on Thursday afternoon for the LaSalle/VCU weekend. Lauren Gresham (another OH) has been out with a Meniscus injury, thus she has not been available as well. We used a lineup on Sunday vs. VCU that we believe gives us really good options, and we will continue to look at that as the season progresses".


"I thought Shayne did some nice things on the outside considering it was her first real action in that position at UD. Isolde and Angel were very efficient in the middle and we will be continuing to work with them and look to get production from that position".


We have been discussing serving quite a bit on UDPride this season so I asked Matt how they graded the effectiveness of each server and who were the best servers on the team. I guessed that Shayne and Ally would be the highest rated servers. Shayne has developed a very good float serve.


"We look at a variety of stats - what the opponent passes off of each server, what percentage of the passes are perfect, as well as the point scoring percentage for each server (points scored divided by serves attempted). We also look at that percentage when the ball is in play. Let's say a server has arguably too many errors - we can look at the percentage of time they are scoring if they don't error (keep it in play). For some of our servers, they are scoring at a very high percentage when they keep the ball in play (vs. a simple service error). With that information, we can talk to the servers about finding the speed/aggressiveness to pressure but not error. Megan and Shayne are consistently the toughest servers".


The team is again on the road this week against Fordham and Rhode Island. I expect the team to play well this weekend and continue improving with their improvised lineup. There is basically no chance (barring injuries) of UD competing for the regular season A10 title so the goal is to improve each week and knock off VCU in the conference tournament. That is UD's only chance at making the ncaa tournament.


Don't give up on the team or the program. I predicted some bumps in the road but will admit I didn't see the St Louis loss happening although St Louis has recruited well recently.
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