Gopher Volleyball 2022 Season

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With the unbalanced Big Ten schedule, I always look at who might have the tougher road. If we think of Minnesota, Nebraska, Ohio State, Penn State, Purdue, and Wisconsin as the top six teams (in alphabetical order) -- and that's risky at this point -- each of them plays 8 games against the other five, except for Penn State, which plays 7. Pretty even.

If we throw in Michigan and Illinois, the Gophers and Wisconsin have the toughest schedules, with 12 matches each against the other seven teams. Ohio State, Purdue, and Michigan have 11; Illinois, Nebraska, and Penn State have 10. All in all, no huge discrepancies.

Minnesota and Wisconsin have the toughest closings to their conference schedules. The Gophers finish with four straight road matches, three of them against Penn State, Ohio State, and Nebraska. Wisconsin finishes at Penn State, at Nebraska, and at Ohio State.
 
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4EverAGopher said:
Will admit I never never never saw this coming. Hope these girls can go bck to this match when they have to dig deep for upcoming wins. The Conference Season has just begun.

One thing for sure, you saw a GOPHER TEAM win last night. Everybody was covering each other all night, as they should. Whoever wanted bodies flying all over the court got their wish.

This win started with Shaff-Wenaas-Kilkelly-CC-Landfair having their best in the back court this year...where each and every match starts.

Great atmosphere....Happy to see The Pav so alive and hope the Student Section keeps coming back.
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Speaking of bodies flying, when the Gophers won match point (the second time; double kill?), CC and Kilkelly, much-maligned here lately and on VT) were doing the flying. Great to see.
 

WayOfTheGopher said:
It's only one game, but all three showed up last night.
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100%

They crushed it and deserved it. I ate a huge plate of crow for that game, as I thought we were going down.


That said: it should not (and cannot!!) take your arch-rival coming to your home arena, with a packed, raucous home crowd, to wake you up and get you playing at the level that you can play.

That's not what it's going to be, for most matches.


They have to find a way to sustain what they found in that match.
 

WayOfTheGopher said:
While watching the replay from last night, I noticed a couple of former teammates going against one another. Elise McGhie and Caroline Crawford were at Kansas last year, while Franklin and Gros played together at Michigan State.
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I don't like the idea of Big Ten teams "stealing" top players from other Big Ten teams.

If you transfer within the conference, I disagree that you should be eligible right away. Franklin should not be able to "upgrade" from MSU to Wisconsin, like she clearly did.


Yes, I know that would mean Gros and Davis would not be eligible for us this year, and I accept that.
 



NW has no road top 10 wins in program history shouldn't have let them reach 18 in any sets
 


Wucherer the best offense they have should be going to her more
 







Disappointing. They don't play enough points with high intensity. They don't fight to keep the ball going on a lot of points. They get too predictable. Either Northwestern adapted to the Gopher's serves or the Gophers started to get tentative on serving and were not effective as early in the match. They need to skip the weight room for a week and spend time with a Sports Psychologist.
 




Impossible to believe the Gophers team we saw tonight is anywhere near being top 10 in the nation. They frittered away game 1 and didn't even compete in games 4 & 5. As Hugh left the floor, he wore the most disgusted expression I've ever seen.
 

Is Hugh just not as good a coach as we want to believe? Or does he just recruit the wrong players? He's recruited top classes for years - does he not "coach them up"?

I'm searching for answers as to why they aren't better.
 

GopherJack said:
Is Hugh just not as good a coach as we want to believe? Or does he just recruit the wrong players? He's recruited top classes for years - does he not "coach them up"?

I'm searching for answers as to why they aren't better.
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I think Hugh is a very good coach. But let’s be honest, there are a lot of good coaches. And those other teams are trying their hardest to win too.
 

walleye said:
Disappointing. They don't play enough points with high intensity. They don't fight to keep the ball going on a lot of points. They get too predictable. Either Northwestern adapted to the Gopher's serves or the Gophers started to get tentative on serving and were not effective as early in the match. They need to skip the weight room for a week and spend time with a Sports Psychologist.
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Yup. This team needs an attitude adjustment. After watching Gopher VB for several years now, this squad exhibits the least amount of fire I’ve seen. It’s appears there are a few players that give up when things get tough. In high school these players were dominant and virtually unstoppable and I don’t think some of them know what it takes to play top level college volleyball, let alone Big Ten volleyball.
 


I'll just put it like this.

It should have been a 3-0 sweep for the Gophers, with how we played in sets 2 and 3. But we laid an egg in set 1. We did not show up for the match, in the first set.

Late start, half-full low energy crowd. They played set 1 like they did not want to be there.


If it takes a huge high energy atmosphere to jack you up to play to your potential .... it's going to be a long season.
 

FredCoxRocks said:
Yup. This team needs an attitude adjustment. After watching Gopher VB for several years now, this squad exhibits the least amount of fire I’ve seen. It’s appears there are a few players that give up when things get tough. In high school these players were dominant and virtually unstoppable and I don’t think some of them know what it takes to play top level college volleyball, let alone Big Ten volleyball.
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It's been the same story for a few years now; these players don't fight and roll over on a regular basis. And it appears Hugh has done very little to address it. This group has consistently mailed in long stretches of matches every year since 2020 and nothing is changing. Just the way this group is: They don't compete hard. Just the way it is. Adjust your expectations accordingly because this is what they are.
 

ClassOf98Gopher said:
I think Hugh is a very good coach. But let’s be honest, there are a lot of good coaches. And those other teams are trying their hardest to win too.
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Sure, there are a lot of good coaches and all the teams are trying to win. But in this match, do you think the Gophers had the better talent -- even far better talent -- and, if so, doesn't it make sense to try to figure out why they lost a home-court match to a team that didn't win a set in two previous Big Ten matches? I think that makes sense. If it's just "everyone's trying to win," it seems to be a 50-50 shot, and we should be satisfied if the Gophers win half the time and lose half the time.
 

They still need to clean up serve return, had a number of points in 4th/5th where front row was backpedaling into setting them and always ending up with a free ball
 

Does anyone have thoughts if there is anyone on the bench that could or should be given a chance?
 

let'sbeclear said:
If it's just "everyone's trying to win," it seems to be a 50-50 shot, and we should be satisfied if the Gophers win half the time and lose half the time.
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This is pretty close to what I am saying.

But, for context about my viewpoint on things, I personly always hated Tiger Woods. If he lost a tournament he would always tell the media what he did wrong as opposed to what the other golfers did right. It just seemed like one-sided analysis to me, like it negated the work that the opponents were putting in. It just seemed to all come from a fundamental high-minded arrogance.

Others may say that is “championship-mentality” or something like that. But to me it just doesn’t seem truthful. Championship mentality seems more like a mind trick. As a sports fan I am more interested in the truth of a situation than in a false sense of superiority used to raise expectations, or whatever. If the expectations are not met, then the fan gets disappointed… and disappointment sucks.
 
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All match long NW was serving short and the best the Gophers could do was just stick their arms out and hope that they get a piece of it. Carter Booth, what can you say about her? Don't get me wrong, she's gonna be a great player someday, but her inexperience showed up that night when they needed her the most. On another note I think NW used their timeouts perfectly, and give credit to Shane Davis he had a gameplan to disrupt the Gophers offense. The Gophers had a lot of chances to take that match, but for one reason or another they just couldn't get it done.
 

rowdaboat said:
52 was useless on blocks last few points
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Booth seemed to struggle with solo middle blocks most of the night (she was good enough getting out to the pins). After a missed block (or two) in, I think, the third set. Hugh had a long side line discussion with her. I also recall Matt Houk having a discussion with her; but that was probably about offense. Booth continues to improve; but some nights the holes appear in her game. She's processing a lot in a short time.

Among, almost, everyone's pet peeves is that our middles struggle to put away overpasses. Husemann and Booth pretty much rely on the two handed dunk. Unfortunately, the Wildcats were just popping it back up. Landfair, on the other hand, slid over to obliterate some over passes.

The Wildcats were terrific at skimming the net on their serves. Anyway, the team that swept Pepperdine was the better club last night.
 

MNMaroonMom said:
Does anyone have thoughts if there is anyone on the bench that could or should be given a chance?
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I did see Arica Davis in for a few points in that fourth set, but that was all that I saw as I didn't really want to watch any more of that awful set. That's also an issue I noticed while looking at the bench like all these great Minnesota players just standing and watching. CC can make a difference when she's on her game, but SSS was probably the last MN player who could make a difference day in and day out. You look at players like Britt McLean or Jasmyn Martin, player highly ranked coming outta high school and they did provide a boost here and there. After they left the program they did have some success at their new schools. I doubt Hugh is gonna do a complete overhaul of the starters, probably expect to see different faces jump in and out against Iowa.
 


WayOfTheGopher said:
After last night's letdown, does a double-digit loss Gopher team make the NCAA tournament?
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Absolutely. Teams are all over the place this year. I think they make it in at 16-12 assuming none of the losses are to Iowa/Indiana/Rutgers. A worse K-State team made it in at 15-12 last year with zero Top 25 wins.
 

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