A bit banged up, but ready for a physical road trip to Bowling Green and Miami

By Don Gromala
Head Coach

We are coming off of what was obviously a very good weekend after taking care of business at home.

We knew the Akron match was going to be a battle. The match with Buffalo was also very much what we expected, so it was good that we executed the way we needed to get the wins and meet those expectations.

Our serving was very solid and consistent all weekend long. We did some things to stress out the opponents. It wasn’t all about the aces, but we we were able to get people out of their offensive rhythm which made them easier to defend.

Our block came back, but we knew we would be blocking better with the type of offenses we were facing. It was nice to see that get back into play.

Looking ahead to this weekend coming up, we will be facing some teams that will be a little more physical. They might bring some different challenges for us. Miami runs a 6-2, which is tougher to defend because it is one additional hitter to defend for three rotations. Bowling Green is also coming off of a very strong weekend. They lost both matches at home in five sets, but they lost both in five to good teams.

Serving is going to be important against both opponents, but I think passing is going to play an even bigger role for us considering we didn’t pass particularly well this past weekend. We passed well enough, but we will have to pass better because these teams are a little more physical at the net and we’ll need to have more options offensively.

We are at Bowling Green on Friday at 5 p.m. and then at Miami University on Saturday at 5 p.m which is an earlier schedule than we are used to in the MAC.

We are trying to focus on that first match, though, because if we can get a good win on the road at Bowling Green it would bring a lot of momentum over to that next day.

This has been a tough week of practice for us. We are a little thin with our practice depth because we are a bit banged up. That has limited us to the amount of things we can do. But in those small segments of time, I think we have done a nice job executing the things we need to achieve and have accomplished a good flow offensively and defensively. Hopefully that carries over to the weekend.