I guess this’ll sort of be a prelude to a potential ‘week that was’ piece this weekend. But I’ve been keeping one eye on this team, even though I’ve yet to directly see them play. Talk about a team that’s going in the tank…or are they? They were picked ninth in the nation and seventh in the MPSF in the preseason polls — not the highest of praise, but not damned with faint praise either.
The Trojans pulled the odd trick with their scheduling this year where their MPSF record is their overall record. They did play a couple of non-conference matches to begin the season, but they were exhibition contests against Canadian schools. Their first match of the year was against somewhat lightly-regarded UC San Diego, and they got swept. Okay, upsets happen. And now four matches running, they’ve dropped 3-1 decisions to Pacific, Pepperdine, CSU Northridge, and, tonight, Long Beach State.
Okay, those are all good teams. All are ranked (though take that with a pinch of salt, we are talking about MPSF conference play here). Long Beach even beat BYU at BYU this season. No great shame in falling to those teams. Looks like USC just aren’t as good as they were a year ago when they made the national championship match.
But then there’s the two wins that came after the UCSD loss and before the four consecutive 3-1 defeats. They beat UC Irvine and Stanford, two of the top three teams in the MPSF and arguably nation. They beat Irvine at Irvine. The win against Stanford came at the Galen Center, but oh did I mention both of those were sweeps?
Huh?
I mean, if you can make sense of this, drop me a line, because I sure can’t. Are USC a team that can comfortably defeat the best in the nation, or are they a team that struggle against fair-to-middlin’?
That’s volleyball for ya.
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