So now we’ll see how these look when I’m not writing it as the match is ongoing. Maybe it’ll be better — maybe my on-the-fly reports are a little too detailed. Maybe it won’t be; maybe it won’t be detailed enough. I did watch the majority of this match; I was just occupied doing something else at the same time. So I’ll have the scoresheet to guide me a little, since I wasn’t able to take notes either.
The first set of the match was plainly ridiculous. The Wildcats came out looking like deer caught in the headlights, and every facet of the game failed them. Serving, service reception, passing, setting, hitting, it was all subpar. The Kansas State libero Kuulei Kabalis had a pretty bad match altogether, but it was downright nightmare territory in the first set. Everybody has an off night now and again, but…well, I shouldn’t harp. Behind hitting star Andie Malloy, the Cyclones never trailed in set number one en route to a 25-14 win. They hit a patently insane .517 to the Wildcats’ .036. Kansas State scored on serve just three times. It was a domination that two teams this nominally close in skill just should not exhibit.
And the Wildcats appeared to get their act together in the second set. This set was much more competitive, with 12 ties and 3 lead changes before the end. The transition defense was still kind of so-so, as the back-row passes to the setter were a bit all over the place. But they came up with the digging advantage in set number two. The Wildcats didn’t do a great job of hitting in the second set, at .130, but it was better than their first set and better than the Cyclones second set hitting percentage of .109. There were a lot more long rallies in set number two, with multiple digs on both sides. Both sides took 46 swings in the second set after both took fewer than 30 in the first. From K-State’s 24-22 advantage, Iowa State fended off one set point but not the second, sending it to the intermission tied at one set apiece.
The third set looked at first like it was going to be competitive like the second had been. Lots of long rallies to start, and Iowa State ran out to a 10-6 advantage at K-State’s timeout. The Wildcats put together a strong run afterward to go up 13-11, led by Kaitlynn Pelger and Alex Muff‘s three block-doubles. But from there it was like a switch was flipped, and the Cyclones were even more dominant than they had been in the first set. The Wildcats only managed to score on serve a further one time in the third, dropping it by a 25-18 count.
And then in the fourth, the Cyclones just asserted themselves even more. The big star of the match, aside from Malloy, was the libero Kristen Hahn, one of the better liberos in the nation. She had 23 digs in this match, which is a fine total for 4 sets, and 9 of them came in the fourth. As I said above about the difficult match the Kansas State libero had, though, it’s not just about getting digs. It’s about transition defense. Anybody can keep a ball alive — keeping it alive and getting it to your setter to start up your offense, with just the one contact, takes a lot of skill and practice. Hahn also had two of the Cyclones’ three aces from the service line. The Cyclones were able to score on serve 14 times in the third set to just five for the Wildcats, leading to an easy 25-15 final.
#19 Iowa State d. #20 Kansas State (25-14, 23-25, 25-18, 25-15)
Kansas State’s a better team than they showed tonight. Their .072 hitting percentage was a low mark for the season. Consider that they had six more attacking errors than the Cyclones despite a 12 to 7.5 advantage in total team blocks. That says to me mental miscues. They were beating themselves. Take nothing away from Iowa State — had the Wildcats not beaten themselves for three of the four sets tonight, the Cyclones would have been more than capable to do it themselves. Malloy posted a career-high 18 kills on a .343 hitting percentage. And she’s a freshman, so there’s no reason to think she won’t top those marks, probably multiple times. Victoria Hurtt also registered double-digit kills for the Cyclones, but was far less efficient, at just a .167 hitting clip for the night.
Both of these teams are cinch NCAA tournament teams, but Kansas State’s gotta be a little concerned about backing in to the tournament. There’s no Big 12 tournament for them to right the ship in. They’ve lost three of their last four matches at a time when teams would really like to be gaining steam rather than losing it. They’ve got two matches left prior to Selection Sunday. The first is at Texas Tech, who don’t have a good record this season but took the Wildcats to five sets on K-State’s home court last month. The other is at home against Oklahoma, who are probably a tournament team, and who swept them in Norman in September. They really could lose both of those matches. Their performance, good or bad, will probably speak multitudes about their potential NCAA tournament fortunes.
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