Damn—game in McCamish? I’m there!This interview got me fired up for Volleyball season!:
Looking to build on last year's Elite 8 appearance.
What I took particular note of though, was the discussion about the match against Pitt on October 9 in McCamish. If I have it correct, starts around the 23:30 mark of the interview. An opportunity to see how many fans GT Volleyball can draw with 2 of the elite teams in the country facing off. Need a huge crowd. If anyone can go, do so. And bring friends! I'll look into coming down from Ohio, but I'll be coming back from a trip to NY, so not sure if I'll be able to make it.
It's very exciting! The endings of the last 3 sets had me on my toes. This year's the first time I bought season VB tickets. Usually I just walk up to O'Keefe the day of and buy it but last season, there were several times where the games were sold out so I'm not doing that again. Louisville match will likely sellout so get in early. The tix are only like $7 for single game tix (they used to be $4 a few years ago!)
Looking at the voters (coaches) you have to wonder if some of them even bother to watch the scores. A few of them have Ohio State in the top 5 even after they went 0-2 this weekend (granted both losses were to #1 Texas but they only managed to win 1 set total). Then you have others, like the Depaul coach Zidek, who have Tech ranked #17? Looking at the overall rankings there definitely seems to be some Big Ten bias with Ohio State only dropping from 7 to 8 after an 0-2 weekend while Pitt goes from 6 to 10 while going 2-1 and Washington goes from 8 to 14 after going 1-1.
GT being pre-season top 10 was justified, especially based on the strong finish last season and Bergmann and a number of starters returning. However, based on what we saw during the GT-Ole Miss match, one must wonder if it's a top 15, top 20 team (sorry to be so blunt). It was pretty bad, from serve receive to setting. And only a hail mary to Bergmann saved that match. Bergmann set a career high 33 kills but that's good and bad b/c we had to go to her for most of the kills. GT moving up to 5 is b/c the teams ranked around GT all lost last weekend. From what I read, the GT-ILL match (was not televised) was better and more balanced and it was a 3-0 sweep so hopefully the Ole Miss match was to work out the first match kinks and I'd like to believe we're in a better place.
I think we are still working out everyone's roles on the team. That being said I think it's a good sign that we could play that poorly and still win the match 3-1. There was notable improvement in the second match and it should be noted we played with a much shorter bench. I did find it interesting that Drewnick took over at setter after the first set for the remainder of the match. Then it doesn't appear she played at all against Illinois. I assume that was coach showing Damico that she better step up her game or she will sit. Her timing was way off on the sets to the middles. We made it a focal point in the 2nd match to feed the middles all game. It's nice to have that kind of depth.
Well, I disagree with your rank assessment. I agree the match against Ol Miss was ugly; the setters were inconsistent, the rotations were often confusing, and there did not seem to be a lot of continuity. But when push comes to shove, they found a way to overcome all those flaws and find a way to win again a pretty good team. I thought it showed strength of character while the team and the coach are trying to figure out how to blend all the new players into the lineup. The transfers were rotated in quite a bit to see how/what they could do. By the end of the match, the Kiwi, Otene, was no longer being rotated out. She was pretty impressive in her 1st match for GT.
The bolded part interests me, as I believe we beat Ohio State to get to the elite 8 last year and then lost to Louisville??? Just my recollection with a lazy attitude of someone else will look it up and confirm or prove me wrong!
