The other major fall sport for women will be starting tomorrow night when the Utes play their first games that count (they played Texas in a private scrimmage… anybody know how that went?) in the annual Utah Classic. Washington State and Lafayette College (a Patriot League team out of Easton PA) are the other teams.
All games this weekend are at the Huntsman Center and all games, including those games where Utah is not participating can be seen on ESPN+.
Friday - Utes vs Dayton Flyers (preseason ranked team) at 7pm
Saturday - Utes vs Lafayette Leopards at 11am
Sunday - Utes vs Washington State Cougars at Noon
There will be other games between the other two teams, with three games a day.
Kamryn Gibaldo and Isabelle Marco (who I thought were the best players on last year’s team) return for their Junior and Sophomore year respectively, and in looking through the roster, a couple of intriguing european players, and freshman coming in. Exciting to see who plays and their skill level.
I live in DC and occasionally have the opportunity to watch various Patriot League games. It is a small but fun league. Also, many people might wonder who they were, and felt that a little explainer can help them.
Plus, the boxer Larry Holmes grew up there. I read a nice story about Holmes in SI many many years ago and that little nugget stuck with me, even to now.
Going to the Dayton game tonight, should be interesting. Dayton is a very solid team. Went to the Red/White intra-squad game last week with my fellow ex-utah vball coach and we both thought this team has potential – just not sure how much of it will be realized this year.
Btw, my fellow ex-utah vball coach, Linda, will be providing the analysis for the broadcast.
The coaches at fan fest seemed pretty optimistic about the exhibition vs texas. Seems like we played 5 sets, with Texas winning the first 3 and us winning the final 2 (they were going to do 5 sets regardless of outcome). Impossible to know if both teams kept the starters in the whole time.
Really looking forward to watching this team tonight. Dayton should be a good first test. That marquette match last year left me with a really bad taste in my mouth.
Thanks Ben, for the knowledge. Texas is a national title contender most years which leads me to the stupily utter speculation that Texas played back-ups the last two games.
Me too. That was a match that should have gone better. Plus, we would have the ability to say we lost to the eventual national champion in the next round.
I finally was able to watch the match from last night and I must say, except for the third game where Dayton found some defense, the Utes pretty much dominated.
Gibadlo had a great game, and I just love what Marco does.
I ask the resident volleyball experts, did Joki answer your questions about right OH? She certainly looked very good.
I wondered who was going to step into the role that Allie Olson played last year and looks like Field is going to the backup minutes at the middle. When I looked at the roster earlier this week, I wondered about her with her 6’5" height. Many that tall can take time to get their, for lack of a better word, coordination to complete. She looked good for a freshman, and seemed to have good feet and movement.
It looked like Wietz and Gibadlo switched back and forth between hitter and defense. Is that right? If so, why?
Is the move to libero for Key-Powell permanent? I thought she had a great defensive game.
Caught a decent amount of the Wazzu match; thats about as competitive of a 3-0 sweep as youll ever see. Proud of the team for how they battled back down 14-6 in the first.
That was good to see. Joki not as good as she was against Dayton, but Grossenbach played well.
Gibadlo is a STAR and this team is paying much better defense. Seems addition by subtraction of some of the seniors from last year has worked with the replacements just flat out being better. At least to my amateur eyes.
