Gopher Volleyball 2018

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let'sbeclear said:
South Carolina clearly is not a Big-Ten caliber team, but I thought the Gophers played their best match in a month.
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How are they not Big Ten caliber?? They are better than a bunch of B1G teams
 

UpAndUnder43 said:
How are they not Big Ten caliber?? They are better than a bunch of B1G teams
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Maybe you're right. I was thinking, though, of how well Michigan State and Ohio State, teams near the bottom of the Big Ten, played against the Gophers. Plus, if you are right, that makes the win last night all the more impressive.
 

let'sbeclear said:
Maybe you're right. I was thinking, though, of how well Michigan State and Ohio State, teams near the bottom of the Big Ten, played against the Gophers. Plus, if you are right, that makes the win last night all the more impressive.
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SCar isn’t great but the Gophers played near perfect. Gamecocks with a ton of serving, receiving and hitting errors
 

UpAndUnder43 said:
SCar isn’t great but the Gophers played near perfect. Gamecocks with a ton of serving, receiving and hitting errors
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There are forced errors & unforced errors. I suspect lots of SC's errors were forced by the pressure MN put on them. It seemed to me SA served well enough, but MN, especially Barnes, returned them. In the end, it seemed SC was more than happy to get out of town with one win.
 

Hrothgar said:
There are forced errors & unforced errors. I suspect lots of SC's errors were forced by the pressure MN put on them. It seemed to me SA served well enough, but MN, especially Barnes, returned them. In the end, it seemed SC was more than happy to get out of town with one win.
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They ended up taking out one of their big servers due to her not being able to get the ball in play. I think their inability to serve and return serves was the biggest key to the gophers win
 


UpAndUnder43 said:
They ended up taking out one of their big servers due to her not being able to get the ball in play. I think their inability to serve and return serves was the biggest key to the gophers win
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Oh, and hitting nearly .400 helped!
 

Would the Saturday game be 5pm if the Gophers win on Friday?
 

UpAndUnder43 said:
Would the Saturday game be 5pm if the Gophers win on Friday?
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My ticket says specifically 5 pm Saturday. But don't put anything past the NCAA under pressure from TV money grubbers, who evidently own the show. Or does the NCAA own the TV show?
 

Release from the University of Minnesota: Minnesota Lands Six on All-Region Team

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Release from the University of Minnesota: Minnesota Lands Six on All-Region Team

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Minnesota Lands Six on All-Region Team

The American Volleyball Coaches Association announced that six University of Minnesota volleyball student-athletes garnered All-North Region honors today. Samantha Seliger-Swenson, Adanna Rollins and Hugh McCutcheon were also awarded the North Region's Player of the Year, Freshman of the Year and Coach of the Year. Along with Seliger-Swenson and Rollins, Alexis Hart, Taylor Morgan, Regan Pittman and Stephanie Samedy were also named All-Region. That number ties the nation's best, along with Stanford.

It marks the fourth time Seliger-Swenson has been an AVCA All-Region selection. The Big Ten Player of the Year has guided the No. 2 seeded Gophers throughout the season. As the team is hitting .300 on the season, Seliger-Swenson has distributed the ball to five hitters to over 240 kills and over 480 attempts. Individually, Seliger-Swenson has 1,203 assists this season (averaging 11.68 per set) and has 253 digs, a team-best 37 aces and 41 blocks.

In her first year with the Gophers, Rollins averages 2.55 kills per set, is hitting .252 and has posted 263 kills entering the NCAA Regional Semifinal. A six-rotation outside, Rollins also has 274 digs, which ranks third on the team. The Second Team All-Big Ten selection and Big Ten All-Freshman Team honoree has also added 14 aces and 43 blocks this season. It also marks the fourth-straight year a Gopher has landed a North Region Freshman of the Year, as Seliger-Swenson (2015), Hart (2016), Samedy (2017) also received the honor.

At the helm of the program is McCutcheon, who guided his team to a 19-1 record in the Big Ten and enters the NCAA Regional Semifinal with a 27-3 overall record. The Big Ten Coach of the Year is in his seventh season and has garnered regional coaching honors three times, with the first two coming in 2013 and 2015. He went on to win the AVCA National Coach of the Year award in 2015.

It marked the third time Hart landed a spot on the All-Region team. She ranks second on the team with 276 kills and averages 2.94 kills per set, while hitting .250. The 2018 season marks the second straight recognition for Samedy. She leads the team with 342 kills, averages 3.45 kills per set, is second on the team in digs with 295, and has recorded 80 blocks and 21 aces. It also marks Morgan and Pittman's first All-Region selections. Pittman is hitting .407 on the season and averages 1.16 blocks per set (118 total blocks). Morgan is hitting .381 and has 242 kills, while averaging 1.09 blocks per set.
 



beavergopher said:
Playing the hated rivals of my undergrad alma mater. The cheating U of Nikegon. Uncle Phil has not been able to buy a championship other than in track. Please crush them ladies!
http://www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/25460105/oregon-athletic-department-put-probation

As we like to say “FTD.”
The Ducks. Take a guess what the F stands for.
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Not at all surprising. I think most folks around the country have long suspected Oregon of operating outside the bounds of NCAA rules and I'm guessing there's plenty of really dirty stuff going on with them if you pull back the curtain further. Whenever you gleefully become engaged with a guy like Phil Knight and a company like Nike, adherence to ethics and rules becomes negotiable.
 




http://www.espn.com/espnw/sports/ar...four-knee-surgeries-roomful-skeptical-coaches

Pat Borzi-ESPNW's article on Taylor Morgan:

They know each other so well that they finish each other's sentences. Minnesota associate athletic trainer Ronni Beatty-Kollasch met Taylor Morgan, the daughter of Gophers women's track coach Matt Bingle, when Taylor was a little girl, running around the Bierman Field Athletic Building or the crumbling maroon track behind it. They bonded when Morgan committed to Minnesota for volleyball.

As Morgan endured four knee surgeries, she and Beatty-Kollasch often met at 6 a.m. in the basement training room of Maturi Pavilion, Minnesota's home court, for rehabilitation sessions. The room was cold, isolated, and so crowded that some athletes exercised in the hallway. Those early mornings featured heart-to-heart talks and fragile emotions, especially after the last surgery in January. The first three had been on Morgan's left knee. This time, she tore the meniscus in her right knee.

"This fourth one was like, 'OK, the other one now?" Morgan said. "This was Old Faithful. Now you're going to mess up on me?

"Mentally, I'm going through it. There were a lot of tears. A lot of me calling my mom. A lot of calling Ronni, coming down there, crying."

Coach Hugh McCutcheon and the Minnesota medical staff met with Morgan and her parents shortly after the surgery, wondering whether Morgan, a reserve middle blocker, should continue. Morgan was adamant. She wanted to be a Gophers volleyball star more than anything, and felt she couldn't face her two little sisters (they're 12 and 14 years old) if she quit before it happened.

"Taylor didn't hesitate," Beatty-Kollasch recalled. "She didn't even look at her parents. She might have glanced my way a bit, and then said, 'We're going to do this.' OK, here we go.

"The rehab process is really complicated. There are a lot of emotions involved with it, and this is her fourth time. We had a lot of talks about this. 'Do you want to play?' She never wavered. She said, 'I don't care if I never get a spot. I want to try.' "
 

Curious to see the crowd @ The Pav today. 3:30 is a weird time. Hoping it starts closer to 4, make sure everyone who plans to attend is there!
 

UpAndUnder43 said:
Curious to see the crowd @ The Pav today. 3:30 is a weird time. Hoping it starts closer to 4, make sure everyone who plans to attend is there!
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IMHO it will be 5,000+. The only tickets that are left are a few obstructed and what ever the other three schools turned back in. I doubt Nebraska turned any in. I will be there at 1. Looking forward to watching some great volleyball this week-end.
 


The last I see it’s 1-2, behind, no ESPNU. What is going on?
 

Tip of the cap to Oregon, they were much better.

Shame for SSS. Was hoping for one last run.
 

cncmin said:
The last I see it’s 1-2, behind, no ESPNU. What is going on?
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We fell apart after losing a very hard fought 3rd set. Really disappointing ending to a season where they should be playing for a championship.
 

cncmin said:
The last I see it’s 1-2, behind, no ESPNU. What is going on?
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Lost a ridiculous second set 41-39 and then came out flat in set 3. I think it was 10-3 Oregon early in the 3rd. Couldn't fight them off in set 4 to force a 5th.
 

It is a disappointing. My daughter is miserable over it. Gonna have to bring our the super parent powers to help her ride it out.

Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk
 

Bottom line was Oregon was much looser and freer with everything than the Gophers were late in the third and throughout the fourth. The ladies were extremely tight in everything they were doing from passing to digging to setting. You could see the stress in their faces and body language. Only got a chance to see the end of set three and all of set four due to work commitments, but it was painfully (almost excruciatingly) obvious. Very sad for the ladies to go out playing the way they did today. This one is going to take A LONG time for the ladies to get over I think.

As time passes, they'll feel much better about the season as a whole. But this is crushing and will stay with them.
 

MRJ said:
Bottom line was Oregon was much looser and freer with everything than the Gophers were late in the third and throughout the fourth. The ladies were extremely tight in everything they were doing from passing to digging to setting. You could see the stress in their faces and body language. Only got a chance to see the end of set three and all of set four due to work commitments, but it was painfully (almost excruciatingly) obvious. Very sad for the ladies to go out playing the way they did today. This one is going to take A LONG time for the ladies to get over I think.

As time passes, they'll feel much better about the season as a whole. But this is crushing and will stay with them.
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Instead of embracing the opportunity they choked because they couldn’t handle the pressure of being at home and with the Final Four being in their backyard. It’s a really sad ending to a remarkable season. But that’s the way it is with Gopher volleyball.
 
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As someone who knows nothing about volleyball, it seemed to me a weakness in receiving serve that has flared up from time to time throughout the season came back to haunt the Gophers today. The stats will reflect that, but even those won't tell the whole story about the difficulties the Gophs had in service reception this afternoon.

Disappointing loss, but it still was a wonderful season that just came up a little short. It'll be interesting to see next year how much we've been spoiled by having Seiiger-Swenson as our setter for the last four years.

Kudos to Oregon. It's hard to believe they have ten losses. They must play their best ball against us.
 

MRJ said:
Bottom line was Oregon was much looser and freer with everything than the Gophers were late in the third and throughout the fourth. The ladies were extremely tight in everything they were doing from passing to digging to setting. You could see the stress in their faces and body language. Only got a chance to see the end of set three and all of set four due to work commitments, but it was painfully (almost excruciatingly) obvious. Very sad for the ladies to go out playing the way they did today. This one is going to take A LONG time for the ladies to get over I think.

As time passes, they'll feel much better about the season as a whole. But this is crushing and will stay with them.
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This is what I saw as well. I was seeing the updates via Gopherhole and when they lost set 2, I turned on set 3 (they were already getting crushed) when I got home to try to change their luck. The 4th set was just an epic they got up 4-0 and maintained their lead up to at least 13-9. The crowd was there for them. It then started to get away from them again, but they rallied back and got up 22-19 on their home floor with the chance to force a fifth set. It was a pretty unbelievable choke job to lose the match especially when they won the first set and then started out the second set up 4-0. The end of the fourth set, the Gophers were clearly trying not to make mistakes instead of aggressively trying to finish points. The irony is they still made the big mistakes...first hitting a shot a wide and then had a huge service error when the game was tied at like 24. I feel bad for those that follow the program closely because the underachieving in the tournament seems to be a consistent theme with the Gophers. They had so many chances to right the ship in this particular match at home and were not able to do so. It seems like outside of the Lynx (who have been far from perfect in this area) literally every other Minnesota sports team pretty consistently either just gets beat or flat out chokes in the biggest moments.
 

Very few girls showed up to play. I thought SSS and Rollins we’re themselves. That is about it. I understand Rollins has some issues receiving and passing but she is fun. I like how she plays. She found a way to hit through and around blocks.

Hart, Samedy, Morgan and Pittman all struggled hitting. McGraw was not good today, especially in set 2 and 3.

Had they found a way to win set 2 (which they did before the challenge) they would have been up 2-0 and won the match.
 

MRJ said:
Bottom line was Oregon was much looser and freer with everything than the Gophers were late in the third and throughout the fourth. The ladies were extremely tight in everything they were doing from passing to digging to setting. You could see the stress in their faces and body language. Only got a chance to see the end of set three and all of set four due to work commitments, but it was painfully (almost excruciatingly) obvious. Very sad for the ladies to go out playing the way they did today. This one is going to take A LONG time for the ladies to get over I think.

As time passes, they'll feel much better about the season as a whole. But this is crushing and will stay with them.
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They were so tight and flat footed once they got behind in the 3rd. My wife said, "They're flat as hell" (which is exactly, word for word, what Hank Stram said on the sideline of Superbowl IV).

I feel they lost some of their sharpness the last couple weeks of the season. SSS especially was slumping late in the season. Ultimately it was the passing and setting that was their downfall.
 

I don't believe they choked. Every time someone loses the word "choke" is used. I don't doubt however they were overly tight knowing that they could win (and should have) this match. They just couldn't relax. The 41-39 set clearly took quite a bit out of them.
 

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