Wow, this is a nice cleansing cold water blast in my face. Thank you so much for the detail. I am not sure on something you said, did you say Wiest was hurt or West?
Now, when I watch, I can take what you see and wrote above into account. For instance, all I see when I see Gibadlo is her finding angles to fire past the block and finding open space.
I noticed Grossenbach is a lefty. I wonder if that helps her, as I imagine that is more rare for blockers to see.
A&M is highly ranked, I sure hope the Utes can compete.
Devyn Wiest – the freshman AA – was out vs WSU. Hopeful nothing serious.
Gibby – when you watch her approach/hit, pay attention to her body and take-off. She often ends up with her body perpendicular to the net because she’s under or close to being under the ball. She then hits the ball hard angle or shot down the line. When your body is relatively perpendicular to the net, your hitting “range” or angle of range becomes limited. If she waits a bit, she would then be behind the ball and wouldn’t have to turn her body as much – she can also hit hard down the line. Otherwise, with capable blockers, she’ll get blocked or dug (easily read by defenders) a lot.
Grossenbach – being a left does help, a bit. Being a right-pin hitter, that means one would not have to track the ball across one’s inside shoulder. Just think the left-side pin hitter being right handed. Good blockers won’t care that much.
This match seemed kind of like Utah taking the place of Washington State in the last match. We were tough, but there was always a service error, passing error (boy, there were a lot, especially from Marco), or some other kind of error that would set the team back. Gibadlo had two bad receipt of serves just after a time out at the end of the 3rd set which put the final nail in the coffin.
You could tell the difference between the two teams based on how they reacted to plays. TAMU saved a lot of points by digging blocks and turning it into offense, while Utah did that sort of “save” much fewer times.
Good experience for the team. One thing about the USU match coming up is that USU plays TAMU tonight, so maybe they will be tired .
The Volleyin’ Utes got two wins so far this week with a sweep of Utah State and a should-a-been-easier 3-1 win against UVU.
Particulary with UVU, down the starting setter, and only a few points of Gibadlo, the Utes struggled finding chemistry with each other until finally doing what they should have been doing the whole match, which is dominating a smaller school.
These games are just appetizers to the marquee game this week, at Nebraska, a perennial title contender and holder of the largest attendance for a volleyball match ever (held in the football stadium).
The team played hard and didn’t get blown out by Texas A&M, but, playing in Lincoln, a good match for the Utes would be scoring more than 15 points in each game (keeping my expectations low). The match will be on FS1 starting at 5PM MDT.
Thanks for the score update. I didn’t get to see any of the matches held in Nebraska as my DVR didn’t catch them on the cable (which I still can’t figure out) and I don’t have the replay option I normally have with ESPN+.
Glad to see that my lowered expectation for the match was exceeded, catch them by surprise a bit in the first set, then quickly get overtaken by higher level talent.
Hopefully, they cut back on the number of service errors in the match, that has been a real bugaboo.
Thankfully, they came back the next day and beat Drake handily.
Coming up is a tournament in San Luis Obispo, starting on Thursday, playing Cal Baptist, Cal Poly and St Marys.
Finally watched the match against Iowa St. Going out to a 2-0 set lead then blowing it… not good.
I assume the Utes will lose their top 25 ranking. Iowa St came in 10-1 and unranked, and they will certainly be ranked after that come from behind win.
Good news, Colorado is up next and they just beat BYU in Provo 3-1, so, now the let down for them. Let’s see if the Utes can come back from this disappointing loss.
I was able to watch the match against Colorado last night, and… yeah. The Utes played better against the #1 team in the nation on the road, than they did Saturday.
Maybe the team this year just is not as good a team as last year’s team. I had hoped for improvement. Maybe because the team is so much younger?
I noticed against Colorado that Wiest was having some of the same trouble she had against ISU, and they went away from her to use Grossenbach late. In fact, it seemed that late in the doomed 3rd set, it was Grossenbach, Mijacic, and Joki in together up front.
The team is very young and inexperienced, no doubt.
That said, I’m actually mostly disappointed with Gibby. As a junior and a national team selection, her hitting range and ball control continue to leave much to be desired.
The Utes went down Arizona way to compete in two matches this week and came away a very desultory 0-2.
First up was Arizona, a team that had a similar record to Utah and the matched played like it until, leading 2 games to 1, Utah lost game 3 very closely. Arizona got some confidence and the Utes lost the match 2-3. The big killer was getting destroyed in Game 2 25-12. Even though the Utes came back off that and won Game 3, it turned.
Next up #8 ranked ASU yesterday. Here is screenshot of stats after the second game. Try to imagine who had won the games.
Service errors continue to haunt the Utes as it has all season, but the match against ASU was horrifying. In addition, the passing has not been great. Too many times the hitters have to just get it over the net and hope they can block or dig to resurrect the point.
Not making the tourney this year, so, maybe time to just let the kids cook and see what ya got.
Took my family to the match yesterday. we have now been to 2, ASU and Colorado, which may be the top 2 teams in the conference.
I thought we played pretty well and were almost even with ASU yesterday, which was nice to see. Just a few spots where we couldnt quite make the plays.
I dont know volleyball enough to diagnose whats going wrong this year and would love to hear thoughts from others. Are we just too young? Do we miss Jardine/Olsen that much?
Not quite ready to go into details. Here are my high level appraisals of the team thus far.
Experienced players have not played as well as expected: Gibby is still too inconsistent in both passing and hitting. She’s too much of a one-note player so far – if the sets are off, then she has a very limited hitting range/repertoire. Had hoped Marco would have improved more in setting.
No real right-pin threat. Grossenbach may be serviceable, but not experienced.
Young and inexperienced: Wiest has talent, but short on high-level D1 experience. The harder you hit, the quicker the blocked hit is coming back on you. Field might have potential to be a very solid player, but too young/inexperienced/un-athletic for now.
Talent level: Not sure about many of our recruits. Powell is a fantastic athlete, but just not enough. Not sure about Mijacic’s talents. In general, our current players don’t really seem to be students-of-the-game – we don’t really have real “gamers”. Jardine was a super athlete, but her vball IQ was limited.
If you want to see good women’s volleybal, watch Japan’s national team on youtube. Although its players are significantly under-sized, their skill-levels are off the chart.
I watched the game last night and have to say, there are just too many times when the team overhits and gets a slam back in their faces.
Colorado, really good, and the Utes aren’t as good. Passing and serving are still problems.
ASU, Ben, I also thought they did play better not scoring less than 20, and even took game 2. It seemed like when they fed Gibadlo heavily in that game, she made several kills. Made me think they were not going to her enough. That said, I thought Marco had improved, but there are still way too many sets where the hitter just has to get the ball over and not timed to hit. I was wondering if ASU had recruited Gibadlo hard (in their backyard) or were they just OK with letting her go somewhere else?
As for both teams, ASU, and UC, they just seem to have the knack and talent, to see where the block is, and where open court is and hit there. Utes still get a lot of hits blocked and when they do get it through, it is dug. I guess that is just the talent level showing between the Utes and the others.
Next up are Cincinnati and WVU on the road. Unfortunately, I can’t go to the WVU match next week. First Ute game of any kind at WVU I will miss.
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