Postseason volleyball, bay-bee! This is one of those six-team tournaments with byes for the top two. The two opening round matches were played last night, with the #3 and #4 seeds moving on. So it looks like a four-team tournament, actually. The first match on tap is
#3 East Tennessee State vs. #2 Lipscomb
Regrettably, there was all of no one in attendance at this tournament, even though it’s on Lipscomb’s home court. What does a team have to do to draw a little? Each of these teams boasts a star scorer at the outside hitter position, with junior Megan Devine leading the way for the Buccaneers (daughter of head coach Lindsey Devine) and Lauren Ford, just a sophomore, leading the way for the homestanding Lady Bisons.
(Yes, the team’s official nickname is Bisons. And in the second match, North Florida’s official team nickname is Ospreys. Someone loan the Atlantic Sun Conference a dictionary, please)
And for what(ever) it’s worth, ETSU is a remarkably young team as well. Devine is the only junior on the roster, and the only senior, setter Kayla Williams, is not a starter and sees only occasional playing time. Everyone else is freshman or sophomore.
The Buccaneers showed some jitters in set number one. A block by Jamie Rutledge gave them an early 3-1 advantage, but after Ford returned the favor for the Bisons to draw it even, the Bucs never again led in the first set. There were a few pretty cringeworthy points, as bad sets and bad communication led to balls falling harmlessly on the court that shouldn’t have. Notably, after Ford’s first serve attempt, with her usual jump serve, went more than 10 feet long for a service error, she switched to a standing serve for this and the second set. And it was pretty effective. She wasn’t acing anyone, but aces aren’t the only effective serves. Any serve that gets the opponents out of system and, therefore, affords you the opportunity to set your offense first is an effective one. Aces are a bonus. On 13-11, she got a kill on her own serve, which is something you don’t often see.
She uncorked another great serve on 14-11, and the setter Caitlin Dotson (who is not to be confused with middle blocker Jewell Dobson…yeah, it got a little difficult to follow along with the commentator) tried to send it over on two. It worked earlier in the set, but this time ETSU was waiting for it, got the dig, set their offense perfectly, and broke Ford’s serve. The Bucs got it as close as 15-13, but did not seriously threaten to draw even. From there, the Bisons extended the lead to 21-17, with Ford smashing a ball home off Devine. ETSU played a terrible point on 22-18, as an overpass on the Lipscomb side of the court went into the net. The Bisons kept it alive by sending over a free ball that would have gone out, but the Bucs tried to play it and were unable to keep it alive. Just a breakdown all around. Lipscomb closed out the first set 25-19 on a ball handling error from the setter Rutledge.
The first set was very much “defense need not apply.” ETSU hit .320, and Lipscomb hit .424. Lipscomb had just 7 digs, and ETSU only 9. Humorously, the commentators didn’t seem to know that their mics were live during breaks in play. The female commentator, who was pretty quiet all things considered, got a little reassurance from the male commentator between sets — “it’s all right.”
Not really, but a little positive reinforcement never hurt anyone.
Ford continued with her standing serve in set number two, and it seemed like it was pretty effective. While ETSU’s ball handling was a bit cleaner in the second set, Ford and Kaycee Green, the A-Sun’s leader in kills per set, both were hitting well at the outset of this set. For a while it looked like Lipscomb was doing all they could to keep ETSU in the match, as hitting errors and other violations accounted for most of the Bucs’ first 8 or 9 points. A run on Ivey Rice‘s serve got them to overcome the little deficit they started with and go up for the first time at 10-9. A block for first-team All-Conference Meredith Hardy got it to 11-9 in favor of ETSU, as it was Hardy’s 60th consecutive match with at least one block. The female commentator was again not saying much of anything during this set, even when the guy was obviously trying to throw to her. At the TV timeout with ETSU up 15-13, they finally figured out to turn their mics off during the break.
A nifty quick set play brought it even at 15, though the Buccaneers ran out to 17-15 again. Smartly, the Lipscomb setter was doing her nominal job more and more and not trying to send it over on 2 for a kill anymore, since it backfired pretty badly the last time she tried it. Lipscomb again drew the set even at 20 with a kill off the touch and out. ETSU seemed to think they won the point, but it looked like a pretty easy call to me. This got the home crowd, what little there was, into it big time. Lipscomb went up 23-22 on the back of a hitting error by Devine and a kill from Molly Spitznagle, but they never made it to set point. The ETSU libero Katie Muey, all 5’1″ of her, got the Bucs their first set point with an ace to 24-23. The Lipscomb timeout to follow effectively iced her, as the next one into the net, but ETSU closed it out with two straight kills, including a great long rally on 25-24 to seal it.
The first three points of set three were scored via errors by the opposite team — an ETSU double hit, a Lipscomb service error, and then another ETSU double hit. A clean block for the Bucs broke the chain. The Bisons took the early lead at 8-6, but Devine rattled off three in a row on her serve, including her only ace of the match, to prompt Lipscomb’s timeout at 10-8. The Dotson/Dobson connection continued to be strong for Lipscomb in this set. After running it back even at 10, Ford got the serve at 11-11 and went back to her jump-serve. It seemed less effective than her standing serve, though — the Bucs were perfectly able to field the serve cleanly, and sided out with an attack error from Green. Attack errors were quite a bit more common in this set than in the first two, with Lipscomb hitting .171 for the set and ETSU not much better at .212. The Bisons took their last lead of the set at 16-14. After the Bucs ran it back to 17-16, the best it again was for Lipscomb was even. Bit of a strange point on 18-18, as a free ball left at the net was returned by ETSU’s Khadijah Wiley for an all-too-easy kill, as the Bisons didn’t even seem to try to defend it. A costly service error from Ford put ETSU up 23-22, and the Bucs closed it out from there. Interestingly, they subbed in for the server on set point, with the aforementioned backup setter Kayla Williams getting what was perhaps a ‘glory sub.’
Despite her team’s season being on the line, Ford stuck with the jump-serve in the fourth set. I can’t say I understand this. The standing serve was working just fine in sets one and two, and it’s about 1000 percent less risky. Lipscomb, though, ran out to a quick 5-1 advantage after Rice hit the ball straight into a leapin double block. Ford’s run on serve ended with a bad service error, though, and she followed that up with an attacking error. Ford showed some definite skill and prowess in this match, but she also showed that she’s far from a finely-polished player, finishing at 14/8/41 for a pretty meager .146 night hitting, and 5service errors (of Lipscomb’s 10 total to just 3 for ETSU), all of them coming on the (what I’d call) ill-advised jump-serve.
The set, match, and Lipscomb’s season effectively ended with a run on Ashleigh Shain‘s that brought it to 16-10, encompassing both Bisons timeouts. A 6-point lead should pretty much always win you the set. It certainly energized the fans ETSU brought to Lipscomb’s gym (the commentator said there were a good number of them…maybe he meant as a proportion of the {pathetic} total). Lipscomb ran it back to 19-17, but came no closer. A service error got ETSU the crucial sideout they needed, and then a quick mini-run on Devine’s serve re-established their advantage. Ford staved off the first match point at 24-19, but then promptly gave it away on the second with her final service error of the night.
#3 East Tennessee State d. #2 Lipscomb (19-25, 26-24, 25-22, 25-20)
and then the second semifinal, half an hour later, was
#4 North Florida vs. #1 Florida-Gulf Coast
This one figured to be less competitive, with the FGCU Eagles the runaway regular season champions of the A-Sun, losing just one conference match all season. They entertained the UNF Ospreys (Firefox isn’t red-squiggly-lining ‘Ospreys’ so maybe it’s not as bad as it sounds to my ears), who were a comparatively meager 10-7 in conference play this season. The Ospreys are led by senior outside hitter Paige Pridgeon and A-Sun Libero of the Year Nicole Baran, who also plays on North Florida’s ‘sand volleyball’ (sigh) team. The Eagles run a two-setter offense, and one of the two is Gigi Meyer, daughter of Ohio State football head coach Urban Meyer. She too plays ‘sand’ volleyball. The big hitting star for FGCU is sophomore Jill Hopper, kind of an all-around talent at the scoring positions as she’s listed as OH/OPP/MB.
UNF went out to an early 4-1 lead in the opener on some spectacularly bad hitting from the top seeds — three of those first four points came on the back of FGCU hitting errors, two of them from Hopper. She added a third to put the Ospreys up 7-4 a little later, and it wasn’t even close, it went about 15 feet long. I half expected the female commentator from the first match would be replaced or simply gone for this match, leaving just the guy (who wasn’t great….he made quite a few obvious mistakes, but at least was talking), but for what little she was there, she was there again for this match. And again saying nothing everytime the dude tried to throw it to her. I looked it up a little later, and it turns out the two of them don’t work for ESPN — they’re Lipscomb people. The guy coulda fooled me –the girl, not so much.
The Ospreys maintained a 2-point advantage for much of the set. The Eagles briefly drew even at 10, but ran out to a 15-12 advantage at the TV timeout. They ran it to 4 at 18-14 with a nice kill from Pridgeon, prompting FGCU’s charged timeout. Baran’s lone service ace (she’s not really touted as much of a server, in fairness) of the match brought it to 5 at 20-15. Yet another hitting error from Hopper made it 21-15. Baran’s counterpart for the Eagles, Whitney Masters, returned the favor with an ace to prompt UNF’s timeout at 21-17. From there, the teams mostly traded points to the finish, coming on an Anna Budinska kill to give set one to the underdog Ospreys.
The commentators, who at least had familiarity with the conference going for them, were pretty shocked to see FGCU drop the opening set and speculated that a ‘wake up call’ would be in order for them in set number two. Carolyn Jenkins led all scorers in the first set with 6 kills for the Ospreys, with Pridgeon not far behind notching five. I’m not sure how many swings Hopper took, but she had just one kill to go with four hitting errors. A dreadful first set for her.
Hopper began to turn it around in set number 2, scoring her team’s first two points with solid swings for kills. But where she was scoring better, her team was still missing a few steps — the Ospreys ran out to a 7-3 lead at FGCU’s timeout. That ran soaked up the Eagles’ first timeout and extended to a 5 point deficit at 10-5. They nearly came even, running to 10-9 on Christine Pinder‘s serve and forcing UNF’s timeout, but they were unable to break the elastic. At that point, the Ospreys asserted control, running back to 16-11 with FGCU again helping them along the way with hitting errors and ball control violations. The teams traded sideouts from there until UNF was able to extend their lead even further, at 22-15. They converted their second set point to take a commanding 2-0 lead.
The Eagles came out after the intermission looking like a much different team. Perhaps they had tournament jitters. Whatever it was that was bogging them down in sets one and two, it was gone in set three, and they executed crisply, like the team who ‘pert near ran the table in the regular season. Aside from 1-0, the Ospreys never led in set 3. The Eagles ran out to 7-3, and UNF closed to 7-6 but could not draw even. The UNF libero Baran showed a little frustration on 13-9 when a long rally went the Eagles’ way, despite some awkward defense on their side of the net. As the kill landed on the Ospreys’ half of the court, she punched the ball in midair. It didn’t escalate from there, fortunately (probably the coach told her to simmer down!). The lead hovered between 2 and 4 points for the majority of the set. Serbian import Marija Pantovic (the most efficient hitter on the night for either side at 11/3/23, for a solid .348 night at the office) fended off one set point, but the Eagles converted the second take set three 25-22.
UNF ran out to the early advantage 5-3 on an odd play where they got away with a pretty obvious carry. Aftera couple of sideouts, though, FGCU went on a big run from 6-4 down, going up 9-6 and then 15-8 on a long run on Masters’ serve. It could have been damage-done from that point, but the Ospreys chipped into the lead, and a run on serve from Dagnija Medina almost got them back to even, with the Eagles siding out on 20-19 to preserve their lead. UNF just could not draw even, though, with hitting errors from Anna Budinska and from Jenkins to put FGCU up 22-19. The Ospreys gave Pinder much too easy of a kill on 22-20, allowing her to softly reach the middle of the court with no resistance, making it 23-20. Hopper, who had a decent match in spite of all the errors I’m highlighting, got FGCU to set point at 24-20. The Ospreys staved off three, with kills from Jenkins and Pridgeon, as well as another error from Hopper, but weren’t able to stave off the fourth. FGCU took the win 25-23 to send us to the race to 15.
The Eagles were the first to go up 2 in the decider, at 4-2, after a horrid overpass on UNF’s side went wide and long on the other side. The advantage was short-lived, though, as the Ospreys impressively rattled off five in a row to go up 7-4. The teams changed sides with UNF up 8-5. The UNF setter Britt Claessens pretty much saved the match for her side on 8-6 with some terrific body control to handle a wayward back-row pass without going into the net. She was able to turn it into an effective set for Pridgeon, gaining the kill and point. A string of sideouts followed, which surely suited UNF just fine. Jenkins hit the ball wide on 10-8 to draw the Eagles within a point, prompting the Ospreys’ timeout. FGCU drew even after the timeout, but the resilient Ospreys got it to match point at 14-12. Much like Lauren Ford in the first match coughed up match point with a service error, that’s what Jill Hopper did here with an attack error, sending the Ospreys to the championship match tomorrow.
#4 North Florida d. #1 Florida-Gulf Coast (25-20, 25-18, 22-25, 23-25, 15-12)
I can’t say either match was a “good match.” They were entertaining matches, but it wasn’t terribly high-quality volleyball. It’s easy to see why whoever wins this tournament is gonna go down in 3 sets to a seeded team come NCAA tournament time. And it makes me feel a little less bad for FGCU. Their season ends with one bad day after dominating the conference in the regular season, but the way they played today? They didn’t really play like they deserved to move on. Credit to North Florida for winning set 5 after losing 3 and 4 — I’m not sure I’ve ever seen that. I was certainly thinking during set 4 that whoever won it would win the match.
It sets up ETSU vs. UNF for the A-Sun Championship and automatic bid. I won’t be able to watch the match live (grr, working! oh and you may have noticed this report didn’t come up until several hours after the matches ended…that’s because I injured myself at work yesterday and even writing feels like physical exertion 🙁 ) but I might write a report on the replay. Long as I can avoid spoilers! I’ve gotta favor ETSU. They played the better match, and perhaps more importantly the shorter match.
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