Gopher Volleyball 2018

Donate To GopherHole
Watched the whole match ... given what happened, I’m still stumped at times that Wisc didn’t win this.

Why not just set it to Rettke every single set??? We literally can’t block the right pin to save our lives. Can’t do it. 30 kills!! And Oregon’s middle did the exact same thing to us at Stanford, except for a measly 17 kills I think it was.

This is a serious problem for this team. Someone is going to make them pay dearly for it.


That said ... a win is a damn win. We won, awesome job getting it done.
 

Gophers_4life said:
Watched the whole match ... given what happened, I’m still stumped at times that Wisc didn’t win this.

Why not just set it to Rettke every single set??? We literally can’t block the right pin to save our lives. Can’t do it. 30 kills!! And Oregon’s middle did the exact same thing to us at Stanford, except for a measly 17 kills I think it was.

This is a serious problem for this team. Someone is going to make them pay dearly for it.
Click to expand...

I think those someones are named Audriana Fitzmorris and Kathryn Plummer, but hopefully that clash is in the NCAA finals.
 

Great win for the ladies. Remember when several posters questioned whether Coach could coach "at this level" or whether the team belonged in the top 15? Love the reactionary world of GH!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

One of the most fun and crucial plays of the night:

<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Great match to watch. Minnesota couldn't rely on Badger errors; they had to go and get the points. They did. Gopher hitting percentage by set: .075, .271, .341 and finally .400.

Quotes from Sheffield and Rettke:

"I thought it was a really good volleyball match with a lot of high-level stuff going on out there. For us to have 13 errors in 159 swings is pretty low.

"The difference tonight was that each team got on one or two scoring runs. We got one or two in the first set, and then the next three (sets), they got on one run each set, and that was the difference. We have to shorten that up a little bit. I'm proud of the effort. We still have a little bit more work to do to close the gap on those guys."

On Dana Rettke's performance
"I've been doing this a long time, and that was about as good of a performance as I've ever seen. And it wasn't just Dana, it was the combination of her and Sydney."

-Head coach Kelly Sheffield


"It really didn't feel different. I just go in and play every game and I go up on every attack with the intent of getting a kill. Syd was doing a great job giving me good balls and she made some risky sets. It would've been really easy for her just to go to the outside and make an easy set but she worked really hard to get me good balls. That's something I noticed halfway through the match and I just knew that if she's going to do that, if she's going to put me and herself in that situation, I just have to terminate."

-Middle blocker Dana Rettke
 

Gophers for Life: Watched the whole match ... given what happened, I’m still stumped at times that Wisc didn’t win this.

Why not just set it to Rettke every single set???

I felt kinda the same way. WI was much more aggressive and quicker to the ball than MN all through the first half of the match, plus they had the home crowd of 7,000 backing them, and MN was back on their heels. But WI sort of mildly got less aggressive. When the camera zoomed in on Rettke in set 4, she looked very tired, not less effective but overworked.
 


MRJ said:
In a way, I think the play of the back court has been a little overlooked this year. Even though they don't get the attention that Hart, Samedy, Morgan, Pittman and SSS get, Barnes and McGraw are quite the dynamic duo back there. They've been pretty much lights out in conference play. Having the two of them around to play together for the next two years is going to be fun to watch.
Click to expand...

Yes! Barnes made one dig off of a Rettke uncontested kill -- it was in either the 3rd or 4th set -- that was beyond world-class. Perfect position and a perfect pass.

Plus, ever since losing some late leads in those two west coast matches, the Gophers have been incredibly resilient. You just know that late in the set, even if they're down by a few points, they're never out of it. And when Wisconsin ran away with that first set, it was still no great concern. This team is just very mentally tough.
 

Gophers_4life said:
Watched the whole match ... given what happened, I’m still stumped at times that Wisc didn’t win this.

Why not just set it to Rettke every single set??? We literally can’t block the right pin to save our lives. Can’t do it. 30 kills!! And Oregon’s middle did the exact same thing to us at Stanford, except for a measly 17 kills I think it was.

This is a serious problem for this team. Someone is going to make them pay dearly for it.


That said ... a win is a damn win. We won, awesome job getting it done.
Click to expand...

Since they were siding out relatively quickly during the last 3 sets I wonder if Hugh just thought let get her kills and shut down the other hitters. Let her get 3 kills and then she's off the floor. The Gophers block in general isn't as good as years past.
 

Waffle said:
Since they were siding out relatively quickly during the last 3 sets I wonder if Hugh just thought let get her kills and shut down the other hitters. Let her get 3 kills and then she's off the floor. The Gophers block in general isn't as good as years past.
Click to expand...

Obviously I'm speaking from a bit of ignorance since I didn't see the whole match, but I've always felt that Rettke is just one of those players you figure will have a big match, regardless of what strategy you employ against her. She's just that good.

But Wisconsin lacks the talent at other spots this Gopher team has, so while Rettke may put up insane numbers (like last night), the question was whether Badgers have enough around her to still win against a truly balanced squad like the Gophers. So far in Rettke's career, we've gotten our answer.
 

Waffle said:
Since they were siding out relatively quickly during the last 3 sets I wonder if Hugh just thought let get her kills and shut down the other hitters. Let her get 3 kills and then she's off the floor. The Gophers block in general isn't as good as years past.
Click to expand...

I see what you mean. That works so long as we can sideout. In general, yes we could. But we could not in set 1 !! And we lost.

So it could be a risk. But then again, not all teams have Rettke or Ronika Stone level players. But as we get to the regionals, they will.
 



Waffle said:
Since they were siding out relatively quickly during the last 3 sets I wonder if Hugh just thought let get her kills and shut down the other hitters. Let her get 3 kills and then she's off the floor. The Gophers block in general isn't as good as years past.
Click to expand...

I wondered the same thing about the strategy of letting Rettke get her kills and then keeping the other WI hitters quiet. That's what they always said in the old days in baseball about Ted Williams. Let him have his 4 for 4 at the plate (nobody'll stop him anyway) and then shut down the rest of the Red Sox hitters. I think MN is, all around, a better team than WI. It seemed to me that the huge WI crowd did less than they could have to support their team, but maybe that was bad TV audio?
 

At the break, Hugh said we "just needed some offensive production".

By the way, Indiana knocked off Michigan in Bloomington in four sets.
 

http://www.mndaily.com/article/2018/10/s-barnes-concentration-evident-not-only-in-results

Daily article on Barnes:

When defensive specialist Lauren Barnes is not watching "Friends" or movies, she's making her presence felt by the opponents of the Gophers’ volleyball team.

It’s not often that a defensive specialist has such an impact, but Barnes is doing that and more — all while her tongue is sticking out.

“It’s like my form of concentration almost,” Barnes said. “I’ve noticed sometimes when I’m focusing hard in school or taking a test, it’ll just be to the side.”

All jokes aside, Barnes has been as consistent for the Gophers as any player as she is fifth on the team with 166 digs and 15th in the Big Ten with 19 service aces, which is two more than her total in the 2017-2018 season.

In order to achieve these feats and to improve her game throughout the offseason, Barnes said she had to work tirelessly to improve certain parts of her game. This included focusing on staying still while making defensive reads and adjusting her service motion.

“A huge change I’ve made is just being stopped,” Barnes said. “Even if I’m stopped and make a wrong read, I can still react faster than if I was moving."

Staying still while reading the defense has been her “biggest upgrade” this season, but she said it was difficult making the adjustment at first. “It was hard [making the adjustment], but it’s become easier now that I’ve seen the results and how much it’s helped,” she said.
 

I don't think they are letting girls just swing and rack up 30 kills. Some players and plays are so difficult to stop that you have to let them "get theirs" and find a way to shut down their weaker players. The Gophers executed this perfectly. Also, this is a strategy that doesn't work against the mighty Gophers of 2018. If you want to try to take away Samedy (for instance) then Hart or Morgan or Rollins or Pittman will kill you. Too many really good players. wisconsin seems to really lack the 2nd/3rd/4th hitters to help out their star.
 



Waffle said:
Since they were siding out relatively quickly during the last 3 sets I wonder if Hugh just thought let get her kills and shut down the other hitters. Let her get 3 kills and then she's off the floor. The Gophers block in general isn't as good as years past.
Click to expand...

Gophers blocks per set/opponents blocks per set: 2016 -- 2.7/1.8; 2017 -- 2.5/2.1; 2018 -- 2.6/1.7
Blocking errors: 2016 -- 60 (34 matches); 2017 -- 44 (34 matches); 2018 -- 35 (21 matches so far)
 

let'sbeclear said:
Gophers blocks per set/opponents blocks per set: 2016 -- 2.7/1.8; 2017 -- 2.5/2.1; 2018 -- 2.6/1.7
Blocking errors: 2016 -- 60 (34 matches); 2017 -- 44 (34 matches); 2018 -- 35 (21 matches so far)
Click to expand...

Awesome. Appreciate this info. Can I ask where you got it from? Or did you just do the math off the Gophers team site?
 


This evening I watched the replay of Wednesday's MN/WI VB match on Fox 1, the local sports channel. Seeing it the second time convinced me that MN won on 1) conditioning (WI seemed done in around the middle of set 4) and 2) just plain old psychological stamina (the Gophers just kept coming at them with a balanced attack and defense that eventually paved the way). Maybe that stuff doesn't show up in the stats.

It also seems to me that any time a WI team, in any sport, appears on TV, the announcers sing the Badgers' praises to high heaven. Not even OSU or Michigan teams seem to get the laudatory comments the Badgers get in all sports. On Wednesday's VB match, the announcers said good things about MN, but I got the same old feeling that they were wishing a WI upset. Does WI must have some big-time lobbyists for Badgers sports, or am I imagining all this?
 

Hrothgar said:
Does WI must have some big-time lobbyists for Badgers sports, or am I imagining all this?
Click to expand...

At least regarding volleyball, I think your're imagining this. Lisa Byington and Michelle McMahon certainly handed out the superlatives to both teams. Maybe too many superlatives; but during a top five matchup on the Big Ten Network that's to be expected. The B1G is supposed to look like the nation's best volleyball conference.

BTN has improved the quality of volleyball announcers compared to a few years ago. And I do think it's a little difficult to do the volleyball broadcast from a studio in Chicago to what they assume is a general audience.
 

UpAndUnder43 said:
I don't think they are letting girls just swing and rack up 30 kills. Some players and plays are so difficult to stop that you have to let them "get theirs" and find a way to shut down their weaker players. The Gophers executed this perfectly. Also, this is a strategy that doesn't work against the mighty Gophers of 2018. If you want to try to take away Samedy (for instance) then Hart or Morgan or Rollins or Pittman will kill you. Too many really good players. wisconsin seems to really lack the 2nd/3rd/4th hitters to help out their star.
Click to expand...

I looked at the play-by-play of the match and Rettke's 30 kills in particular.

23 of her kills were side outs (4 in set 1, 5 in set 2, 6 in set 3, 8 in set 4)
3 kills were the 2nd point of a run (one in each of the first 3 sets)
2 kills were the 3rd point of a run (one each in sets 1 & 2)
2 kills were the 4th point of a run (one each in sets 1 & 2)
In the 4th set, all her kills were side outs.
 

If it really was Hugh's genius plan to just let her get kills, then sideout the next play, and wait til she was out of the front row to go on runs .... then why have our middles and OH waste energy at all jumping and putting up at least the appearance of a block on her hits?

I don't buy that. They just blocked her very poorly.

It's time to move on. She got 30 kills, because of a combination of being a great player, and our very slow, lack of blocking her. And we still won.
 

Ignatius L Hoops said:
At least regarding volleyball, I think your're imagining this. Lisa Byington and Michelle McMahon certainly handed out the superlatives to both teams. Maybe too many superlatives; but during a top five matchup on the Big Ten Network that's to be expected. The B1G is supposed to look like the nation's best volleyball conference.

BTN has improved the quality of volleyball announcers compared to a few years ago. And I do think it's a little difficult to do the volleyball broadcast from a studio in Chicago to what they assume is a general audience.
Click to expand...

Thanks, that helps a great deal. You see things clearer than I do. Here's what I felt, right or wrong: I live in MN but I'm not originally from MN or WI; it's just that I grew weary of the announcers' incessant repetition during the match, and their lack of incisive analysis. I can see the kills Rettke is getting; I don't need the announcers counting them for me. Better if they had said WHY she was getting so many. And they said at least 50 times that MN was undefeated in league play. Way too repetitious. It would be best if the announcers described how the match is progressing as it goes along and why. Finally toward the end of set 4, McMahon did get around to saying it looked as if MN had tired WI out. It had been obvious for quite a while that WI had to work harder & harder to score in sets 3 & 4 and were less energetic than in set 1. Didn't she see that happening as the match progressed? Why not comment on it as it was happening? I felt the announcers had their minds dead set on a WI upset, and when it didn't happen all they could do was keep repeating the same old stuff, how nobody had this many kills for WI since 1989 or 90 and how MN always "found a way to win." The coaches do a professional job of preparing their teams. Why not get equally professional announcing? (Sorry if this is TOO critical for some people; it's just I wish for analysis of VB matches, but hear little of it from the announcers.)
 

Hrothgar said:
Thanks, that helps a great deal. You see things clearer than I do. Here's what I felt, right or wrong: I live in MN but I'm not originally from MN or WI; it's just that I grew weary of the announcers' incessant repetition during the match, and their lack of incisive analysis. I can see the kills Rettke is getting; I don't need the announcers counting them for me. Better if they had said WHY she was getting so many. And they said at least 50 times that MN was undefeated in league play. Way too repetitious. It would be best if the announcers described how the match is progressing as it goes along and why. Finally toward the end of set 4, McMahon did get around to saying it looked as if MN had tired WI out. It had been obvious for quite a while that WI had to work harder & harder to score in sets 3 & 4 and were less energetic than in set 1. Didn't she see that happening as the match progressed? Why not comment on it as it was happening? I felt the announcers had their minds dead set on a WI upset, and when it didn't happen all they could do was keep repeating the same old stuff, how nobody had this many kills for WI since 1989 or 90 and how MN always "found a way to win." The coaches do a professional job of preparing their teams. Why not get equally professional announcing? (Sorry if this is TOO critical for some people; it's just I wish for analysis of VB matches, but hear little of it from the announcers.)
Click to expand...

This isn't meant to excuse any perceived bias, but I do think that sometimes announcers get caught up in the enthusiasm of the home team's environment. Maybe the commentary in this match would have been different if it had been Wisconsin at Minnesota rather than Minnesota at Wisconsin.
 

Hrothgar said:
Thanks, that helps a great deal. You see things clearer than I do. Here's what I felt, right or wrong: I live in MN but I'm not originally from MN or WI; it's just that I grew weary of the announcers' incessant repetition during the match, and their lack of incisive analysis. I can see the kills Rettke is getting; I don't need the announcers counting them for me. Better if they had said WHY she was getting so many. And they said at least 50 times that MN was undefeated in league play. Way too repetitious. It would be best if the announcers described how the match is progressing as it goes along and why. Finally toward the end of set 4, McMahon did get around to saying it looked as if MN had tired WI out. It had been obvious for quite a while that WI had to work harder & harder to score in sets 3 & 4 and were less energetic than in set 1. Didn't she see that happening as the match progressed? Why not comment on it as it was happening? I felt the announcers had their minds dead set on a WI upset, and when it didn't happen all they could do was keep repeating the same old stuff, how nobody had this many kills for WI since 1989 or 90 and how MN always "found a way to win." The coaches do a professional job of preparing their teams. Why not get equally professional announcing? (Sorry if this is TOO critical for some people; it's just I wish for analysis of VB matches, but hear little of it from the announcers.)
Click to expand...

I agree with a lot of what you've said but I think its a combination of factors.

1. We want to hear about the Gophers. We know the team very well so we expect the announcers to, which isn't always fair.
2. If you want great analysis, Gopherhole is better than any announcing team on BTN
3. Volleyball isn't broadcaster the same as football or basketball. Less experienced announcers who know a lot about volleyball but not nearly as much about announcing. It isn't mainstream. I am thankful we get as many televised games as we do.
 

This volleyball team is on the verge of something special. I had multiple coworkers who have no affiliation to the school and are not volleyball fans mention to me they watched the wisconsin match. It does help that some local media members (Justin Gaard) are tweeting about tuning in. Gets it on peoples radars and gets them to tune in! Nice to see the team getting recognition and increasing their following.
 

Not everyone can be Karch Kiraly (and a few others) who actually talks about rotations, net match-ups, substitutions and specific skills. I wish there were more; but, of course, not everyone likes Karch.

I still think the BTN broadcast have improved professionally. Now, they actually know the top players. And I still give them a bit of a break; announcers like Byington and McMahon have about 20 other jobs. The big money is not in volleyball announcing.
 

Ignatius L Hoops said:
Not everyone can be Karch Kiraly (and a few others) who actually talks about rotations, net match-ups, substitutions and specific skills. I wish there were more; but, of course, not everyone likes Karch.

I still think the BTN broadcast have improved professionally. Now, they actually know the top players. And I still give them a bit of a break; announcers like Byington and McMahon have about 20 other jobs. The big money is not in volleyball announcing.
Click to expand...

I've always enjoyed Mike Wolf's calls of matches.
 

I appreciate reading all your comments to my pretty hastily composed post. I'm a VB novice (though not a sports novice), and I really wish some insight from those who know - as to why MN wasn't stopping Rettke (aside from her superior height) and why MN was stronger at the end than WI. One thing that has really impressed me is that WI's and MN's coaches are both true gentlemen, ready and willing to give the other side full credit for what they do well. Too bad our national politicians don't match up to our VB coaches.
 

UpAndUnder43 said:
I agree with a lot of what you've said but I think its a combination of factors.

1. We want to hear about the Gophers. We know the team very well so we expect the announcers to, which isn't always fair.
2. If you want great analysis, Gopherhole is better than any announcing team on BTN
3. Volleyball isn't broadcaster the same as football or basketball. Less experienced announcers who know a lot about volleyball but not nearly as much about announcing. It isn't mainstream. I am thankful we get as many televised games as we do.
Click to expand...

Speaking as someone with sports broadcast experience, I concur with a lot of this, especially point No.3. Volleyball is very hard to broadcast due to the nature of the sport. Action happens so quickly that getting a thorough analysis of how things are breaking down is very difficult. The only times that allow for such analysis are timeouts or in=between sets, which can also prove difficult due to mandatory breaks for ads that occur during any sports broadcast. Even faster moving sports like basketball and hockey are easier to breakdown because there's a certain flow that takes place where analysis of x's and o's can be given. In volleyball, that's really tough to do.
 
Last edited:

Have to be concerned about the starts to each match. Losing set 1 is a bad precedent. Struggling in set 3 as well
 


You must log in or register to reply here.



Top Bottom