Vollyballers take on the SEC beginning Friday at Ole Miss

[StrangeVol]

After what has been a somewhat lackluster start to the season, The Lady Vols stand at 6 & 4, unranked, with most of their victories coming over less talented teams. On balance, one could also say that 3 of our 4 losses were to teams (#6 IL. (X 2) & #5 Baylor) ranked in the top 6 nationally, so maybe our record isn't all that bad. The only inexplicable loss was getting swept by Cinncinatti, on the road.

In any case, we're off to Oxford to play at 7:30 p.m. on SECN+ and get the SEC portion of our season underway.

So, how good is Ole Miss at this point? They're 8 & 3 so far, on an 8 game winning streak and have played no one of note. An oddity of their record is that they are 0 & 3 on their home court, having launched their season by hosting the Rebel Invitational and promptly getting beat by all three of their guests, unranked Rice, UCF and Iowa State. Go figure.

I like our chances in Oxford. Based on what I've seen so far this season I think we are the better team and have played a far more demanding schedule.

This is a Lady Vol win, imo.

 

[Putbacks]

I will say that the Cincinnati loss was technically on a neutral court as opposed to a road loss. (That makes it look even worse.)

On the flip side the Michigan St. win on MSU’s court might prove somewhat redemptive. That is currently MSU’s only loss. They are playing Penn St. right now, so we’ll find out more about them.

 

[RollerVol]

thanks SV...GO LADY VOLS!

 

[Putbacks]

FWIW, #5 Penn St. took care of MSU in 3 sets at State College.

 

[StrangeVol]

Coming up shortly @ 7:30...maybe the volleyball team can get their SEC run off to a good start.

 

[sccshortstop]

LVs lose 3-2

 

[StrangeVol]

Yes, we lost 3 -2 and boy did we ever get schooled on blocking. Ole Miss killed us on blocks and our blocks were few and far between. Remember that a block is only recorded if it results immediately in a point. They out blocked us 13 to 8. Bear in mind that block attempts that don't result in an immediate point but force the receiving team into "scramble mode" don't result in a block being recorded. Very often though they do force a weak or ineffective kill attempt, which in turn sets the original blocking team up for a kill, but they still aren't counted as blocks. Those "non-block blocks" are what hurt us so many times during the match.

In short, we did not block very well as a team. That must improve.

Also, we gave up 8 aces on serve and had only 3. We did not have many service errors though, so that's a good thing.

There are 6 key stats in a volleyball match. They are points, kills, aces, blocks, assists, and digs. We won in 4 of the 6 categories, yet we lost the match. You don't see that a lot.

Some good things that I noticed, Rocky Perinar was back and played well. Lily played well and got a couple of front row rotations which she took advantage of by scoring. Daniele Mahaffey is becoming a force. Sedona Hansen had 60 assists! Yes, I said 60! Madison Coulter had 35 digs, Mahaffey had 22 and Hansen (the double double machine) had 14. So there were some bright spots to the match.

Other than the disappointment of coming out on the short end of the final score, it was not a great start to our SEC Volleyball season.