I thought we played extremely well in set three and even set four except at the very beginning when we let them get a lead and started to close in the end.
Started a little sluggish, Black got blocked a couple of times on the outside and we didnt cover our hitters as well as we need to and that is surprising because looking at the position of players when we attack we seem to be in the correct spots just not reacting. Iowa State's passing was on target andI really like the way they are set and have minimal movement at point of contact when in serve receive. We missed a few serves early as well and ended up losing 25-21. Set two we made some adjustments but Iowa State had some key blocks to stop us from making a comeback complete and we lost 25-23.
Set three...if we play like this we will win the rest of our conference match sans maybe Texas home and road. We were finally able to get into rhythm and were making more digs to target keeping us a bit more in system. We kept them also out of system more and lead to more predictable offense for Iowa State.
Set four...fell behind early and just after midway point we were down by about five and our team responded. We were getting two to three points for their one and closed the gap to 23-23. Crowd started getting into it and even though we stop being aggressive on serve we had some float to our serves getting harder to control and picked up a couple of aces and out of system passes.
At 23-23 a ball was dug by that the official said hit the floor. Very poor call and we would have won the point after it bounced off of us onto the other side. While I dont think ever any one point affects the final outcome we had no real time to regroup losing the next point on ball handling error which honestly had to be called but rubbed salt in wound from missed call earlier. Ironically in the point in dispute a double hit could have been called earlier against Iowa State.
I thought Iowa State in four prior to match and that is what occurred however I will say if we fix a couple of things we are much closer to Iowa State and teams like that than we were 5 weeks ago.
We are distributing the ball much better and if stay within the game plan and maintain focus we could be in really good shape come NCAA time. Setter tried to be offensive early and wasnt working settled down and ran offense within system and got some kills on better opportunities later on.
One of the main reasons Iowa State's hitting percentage was higher than it should have been, even though we held them to about.200 was the fact that they were hitting against one person blocks as one of the middles was not getting to the pins to close the block and their was a bigger holes in the front line defense. Even though this stayed about the same throughout the match we adjusted our pin blockers and defense and those adjustments got us more digs in later sets. We have to close the block more against NCAA caliber teams.
We got more production out of OH2 and Mellanger hit for I think her highest percenatge in conference play but our 5-1 system had 25 attempted attacks from setter position compared to only 4 by Landwahr from Iowa State. 25 is too many in my opinion and even though she got 7 kills for points we had five errors. If the other team covers the setter's shots they are likely in system immediately unless hard swing to zone 1.
Very pleased with performance but room for improvement but liked what i saw after set one was over against a fluid non fancy top 20 team who is well coached.
Footnote: John Corbelli still has major hops on the dig call. Never seen him get that high.
Started a little sluggish, Black got blocked a couple of times on the outside and we didnt cover our hitters as well as we need to and that is surprising because looking at the position of players when we attack we seem to be in the correct spots just not reacting. Iowa State's passing was on target andI really like the way they are set and have minimal movement at point of contact when in serve receive. We missed a few serves early as well and ended up losing 25-21. Set two we made some adjustments but Iowa State had some key blocks to stop us from making a comeback complete and we lost 25-23.
Set three...if we play like this we will win the rest of our conference match sans maybe Texas home and road. We were finally able to get into rhythm and were making more digs to target keeping us a bit more in system. We kept them also out of system more and lead to more predictable offense for Iowa State.
Set four...fell behind early and just after midway point we were down by about five and our team responded. We were getting two to three points for their one and closed the gap to 23-23. Crowd started getting into it and even though we stop being aggressive on serve we had some float to our serves getting harder to control and picked up a couple of aces and out of system passes.
At 23-23 a ball was dug by that the official said hit the floor. Very poor call and we would have won the point after it bounced off of us onto the other side. While I dont think ever any one point affects the final outcome we had no real time to regroup losing the next point on ball handling error which honestly had to be called but rubbed salt in wound from missed call earlier. Ironically in the point in dispute a double hit could have been called earlier against Iowa State.
I thought Iowa State in four prior to match and that is what occurred however I will say if we fix a couple of things we are much closer to Iowa State and teams like that than we were 5 weeks ago.
We are distributing the ball much better and if stay within the game plan and maintain focus we could be in really good shape come NCAA time. Setter tried to be offensive early and wasnt working settled down and ran offense within system and got some kills on better opportunities later on.
One of the main reasons Iowa State's hitting percentage was higher than it should have been, even though we held them to about.200 was the fact that they were hitting against one person blocks as one of the middles was not getting to the pins to close the block and their was a bigger holes in the front line defense. Even though this stayed about the same throughout the match we adjusted our pin blockers and defense and those adjustments got us more digs in later sets. We have to close the block more against NCAA caliber teams.
We got more production out of OH2 and Mellanger hit for I think her highest percenatge in conference play but our 5-1 system had 25 attempted attacks from setter position compared to only 4 by Landwahr from Iowa State. 25 is too many in my opinion and even though she got 7 kills for points we had five errors. If the other team covers the setter's shots they are likely in system immediately unless hard swing to zone 1.
Very pleased with performance but room for improvement but liked what i saw after set one was over against a fluid non fancy top 20 team who is well coached.
Footnote: John Corbelli still has major hops on the dig call. Never seen him get that high.