One more new lineup and another challenge with YSU here tonight

By Don Gromala

Head Coach

One of the the things we faced this past weekend at West Virginia that we had yet to see this season was a fast offense. West Virginia and Montana played a very fast set tempo to the pins. That stressed us out a bit. 

Offensively, West Virginia is the best team we have faced this year because of their system and the fact that their setter was very smart.

We grinded out some wins, though. St. Francis was close, and we battled back to win the last three pretty easy. We were down 2-1 to Montana, too, so it’s good to see we have that comeback in us.

Tonight is going to be tough. Youngstown State poses some similar stresses we’ve seen with double-quick offense and fast tempo. They have had a new staff come in and they have become a much better team over the last couple of years. They have some good wins beating programs like Virginia and Illinois-Chicago. 

Youngstown State poses a challenge because of the style of offense they run, so if we are serving too easy or losing too many points on our serve, it will be tough for us to defend them. 

It’s a Tuesday night so we should have our students here. Youngstown State will bring some fans, too, so it should be a good crowd.

We will have a different lineup again tonight. That will be our eighth different lineup. Last year we had two-to-four different lineups where this year we could have eight-to-10. Players are getting opportunities, and that’s good. 

Tonight is also a an opportunity for returning players to make up for last year when we struggled at Youngstown State. We will come out to prove we are a better team and to keep our home streak alive. 

This weekend we will go to Towson. That will be very similar to tonight where we will face some teams that have jumped out to a good start. Towson has only lost a couple of times. St. John’s has been to the Hawaii tournament, where they played some good teams and beat New Mexico, which is a very good program. 

Last week was tough with the scheduling of two matches on a Friday that were four hours apart. We do the same thing this weekend, and we play tonight. It’s a good opportunity to prepare for what we would see in the Mid-American Conference tournament when we could play four days in a row. 

We are also talking a lot about maintaining our focus. In our first segment of non-conference play we have started out strong. How are we going to finish this month with these last four matches? It’s a lot about mental focus and doing all of the little things right so that we don’t have to go back and retrain the basics before the MAC season starts up.