It was a gorgeous Fall Weekend with summer-like temperatures, and lots of family around, and we were hopeful for a fun weekend. We had parents from all over, Jane's trainer who'd never seen her play before, Lauren was back to see us play, Elissa's brother, and other relatives and friends of several players. Unfortunately, we had a bit of a stumble. I don't think it compares to last year's mid-season stumble when we lost two 5 set matches back to back to both Conn and Trinity in the same afternoon, but it was painful nonetheless.
Friday night we got off to a slow start, and seemed to not be mentally dialed in, but our talent won out and we pulled out a tight, come from behind victory in set one over Conn 26-24. We rallied in the 2nd game to get back on track with our game plan, and started to run our offense and won easily while hitting a powerful .429! We were still in control in the 3rd game, but it was a bit closer as we came away with a 25-22 win to seal the match. Overall, MJ led our offense with 11 kills, and Jane and Stud added 8, and 6 kills respectively. Our hitting % for the night was .296, which is higher than usual for us, and that was great to see. We out-blocked them 12-4, and held them to a hitting % of .116.
Saturday afternoon was a different story. The positive was that we stayed in a really nice hotel, had a great "grocery store breakfast" right there in the hotel, and even got to walk to a Dunkin Donuts around the corner from our Hotel before heading back to the gym. That was where the fun ended, I think.
Tufts came out strong, and served us out of the match. They were in system all night with powerful hitters that we just couldn't contain that day. Our receive was off (is that an understatement?!), and thus we had trouble getting any offense going. As if that wasn't bad enough, Tufts was ON it. It was almost like the perfect storm brewing. We couldn't pass, thus were not able to run any kind of offense, so we gave them easy balls, and they ran their offense down our throats, which tended to put us back on our heels for the upcoming serve receive, and you see the vicious cycle developing here.
There are a few stat lines that provide some clarity: they had 41 kills to our 20; they hit .252 to our .010; we had 10 receiving errors to their 3, and they had 39 assists to our 18. We actually out-blocked them 11-10, but we seemed to do a lot more keeping it in play, than attacking the ball. Caitlin came away from the match with 19 digs as our defensive leader, and was aided by 8 digs by both Jane and Julia. We have done that very thing to teams before, and now we know what it's like to be on the other side. Once is enough, I say!
We take on Skidmore on Tuesday night for our final Home game of the season, and thus, Senior Night! It will we web cast for anyone who won't be able to be there. Match time is 7pm.
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