11-26-2019, 10:35 PM
(This post was last modified: 11-26-2019, 10:35 PM by Viking_Guy.)
The Cougars are a good team, and especially tough at home. Factor in travel to the Palouse in late November, and this has been a trap game for the Pac-12 for a long time.
Stanford did just enough tonight, winning in 3 by identical 25-22 scores. If the Cougs got in system, their mids killed us -Jehlarova hit .500 on the game. Their defense was also really good - their libero Dirige brought up some balls that were just crushed.
But late in the set, Plummer often rode to the rescue. She ended up hitting .362, with a ton of OOS sets thrown her way. Fitz hit .400, and Stanford played a ton of defense.
One takeaway for me is we have to get our middles going - Gates hit .095, four kills and two errors in 21 attempts (to be fair, the two errors were that "Jenna trying too hard and sets it close and low" type blocks on the slide, but her slide just wasn't very terminal, even when she had a really good swing at it. And Campbell only got 10 swings. When Gates is one of two hitters front row for two rotations, they need her to at least sideout more regularly.
As always, I wish we had a more varied middle attack. Plummer hitting from the back makes up for a lot, but a few more quick and gap sets might be a nice change of pace.
In any case, critical win. If they can close out at home against Cal on Friday, I think they've pretty much locked up a #1 seed, maybe as high as #2 overall, if the committee weights play since Plummer returned to health more heavily.
Go Card!
VG
Stanford did just enough tonight, winning in 3 by identical 25-22 scores. If the Cougs got in system, their mids killed us -Jehlarova hit .500 on the game. Their defense was also really good - their libero Dirige brought up some balls that were just crushed.
But late in the set, Plummer often rode to the rescue. She ended up hitting .362, with a ton of OOS sets thrown her way. Fitz hit .400, and Stanford played a ton of defense.
One takeaway for me is we have to get our middles going - Gates hit .095, four kills and two errors in 21 attempts (to be fair, the two errors were that "Jenna trying too hard and sets it close and low" type blocks on the slide, but her slide just wasn't very terminal, even when she had a really good swing at it. And Campbell only got 10 swings. When Gates is one of two hitters front row for two rotations, they need her to at least sideout more regularly.
As always, I wish we had a more varied middle attack. Plummer hitting from the back makes up for a lot, but a few more quick and gap sets might be a nice change of pace.
In any case, critical win. If they can close out at home against Cal on Friday, I think they've pretty much locked up a #1 seed, maybe as high as #2 overall, if the committee weights play since Plummer returned to health more heavily.
Go Card!
VG
