Learning from last week and a look ahead to Akron and Buffalo

By Steve Bailey

Assistant coach

Both Ohio University and Eastern Michigan played very well in our games with them last week. Ohio perennially a team to beat in our conference, obviously, and they did some very good things and played us pretty tough with their home crowd. Eastern Michigan did a good job of keeping themselves in control. Whether we were serving tough or making changes in our defense, they did a very good job of playing a consistent, clean game. We just weren’t able to do the same thing and that’s why they came out on top.

Because of that, this week in practice is going to be focused more on us and what we need to do in terms of ball control and movement to put ourselves in a better position against Akron and Buffalo. Akron is playing very well. They had a very good weekend, and Buffalo is 12-4. Both teams are very good, so we will have to bring our A game to go 2-0 at home.

Akron comes to the M.A.C. Center at 7 p.m. on Friday. Having a big crowd for that Wagon Wheel Challenge point will help us. Our team really does well with a lot of noise. Most of the teams we have played this year said we do a really good job of bringing high energy and being very loud already. Our kids feed off of that, so I think being in the atmosphere for the Akron match will be good for us. The energy level will already be there, and if that is a good match it can slingshot us into Saturday at 7 p.m. for Buffalo. It would be nice to get a good crowd for that as well because we need all of the home court advantage we can get against these two teams.

Akron doesn’t run a very complex offense and they don’t do anything out of the ordinary. Ron does a very good job with them of being very simple, very basic, but executing at a high level. They hit high. They hit hard. They don’t make many errors. To beat them, we have to make sure we don’t make many errors on our side and control the ball better. If we do that, it will be a good competitive match.

Buffalo is very similar. All three teams, Akron, Buffalo and Kent State, are really very similar. They all have two good outsides. They all have a good middle and a pretty solid setter. It’s just a matter of who puts their players in the best situations.

We have a good, friendly rivalry with Akron. As coaching staffs we get along pretty well. We have all known each other through the recruiting world. Our staffs interact and can hang out with a competitive banter going back and forth. We understand that with our schools being seven miles apart there is going to be a natural competitive rivalry. But it is a healthy competition where both teams want to win, both want to say we have a hand in that Wagon Wheel Challenge. 

Winning in the Kent State-Akron rivalry obviously also helps with recruiting. We are both recruiting the same kind of kid. There are probably three or four kids out there who have offers from four or five MAC schools, including Kent State and Akron. If we can say we beat Akron that’s a bonus for us on the recruiting side.