WA Post Match Press Conference

[BeckysTXA]

I jumped on the press conference with Horsmon, Maura and JPete.

Maura had no voice. Apparently she took leaving it all on the court literally. But she made a statement that it was an incredible match and she was proud of the team and this program.

JPete talked about how much she loved the energy and chemistry of the team on the court today. She also said as tough as it was to lose in five today, it has already motivated everyone to get to work for next year and she stressed how important the work over this summer will be. Note: they had no summer workouts last year.

Maura said they take a couple weeks off and then start the off-season training with strength coach Mark Thobe.

I asked Horsmon how important it was for everyone on this team to get this NCAA experience. He said the experience will be invaluable for next year. That they had so many freshmen playing it was advantageous for them to learn how to compete at this level for these young players.

He went on to say the experience this year has been awesome with this team and this experience with all the freshmen has given them the understanding of what it takes.

He also said not having many fans that could attend wasn’t great, but he liked that the tournament seeded all 48 teams and it was more fair than some of the regional seeding that sometimes happens because of the area UD is in. He said he felt this year really showed UD was one of the better teams and what we could do. That might not have happened if it was regionalized matchups like in the past.

Finally, Horsmon said this was Bridget’s last match. She finished her career with almost a triple-double, against a Top 10 team that has a chance to win it all. 43 assists. 9 kills. 8 digs. Heck of a day. Congrats Bridget and best wishes.

I forgot to add, Horsmon thinks Bridget has a shot at being an AA. That’s would be awesome. In the past there has been a banquet to honor them and announce the POY, but that’s probably not happening. Still she will have a banner at Frerricks if she gets it.

[BeckysTXA]

I’ll post this under “press”.

I was out on a Washington forum and several posters were were complimentary of our Libero Maura. We know she’s great, but think about that. To compliment a Libero, a person has to know more than a little about how volleyball works. So these fans probably watch a lot of volleyball. And they watch a lot of PAC12 volleyball, where there are a lot of good Libero. And Maura impressed them.

Many also said JPete could okay for any team in the country and she will probably be a 2nd or 3rd team AA.

Finally, they acknowledged if we had played better in the serve game, they would have been heading home. They couldn’t believe we out-blocked them and out-hit them. Two areas they dominated in the PAC this year.

I agree with everything they said.

[BeckysTXA]

I also picked this up from the Washington press conference... Cook is Washington’s head coach.

“We picked a good day to have one of our best service days,” Cook said.

That’s the tale of this match. We didn’t have a great day in the service game. They had one of their best. And it was still a dog fight, because we out played them in so many other aspects of the game.

Emulating high pressure serve situations in practice is very hard to do. How do you account for Adrenaline, nerves and fatigue in a hard fought match? The only way you can really “practice” that is by scheduling as tough as you can so your players can actually do it early in the season to prepare for the NCAAs. We never had that opportunity this year, but will next. I’m pretty sure we will have Louisville at home and maybe both Missouri and Michigan on the road. That’s a good start to the Fall 2021 schedule.

[BeckysTXA]

We will definitely get votes in the final AVCA poll...we might even be ranked based on yesterday’s performance against WA.

There were two upsets in the 2nd round:

Pitt 3-0 over #14 Utah St. I thought Pitt should have been seeded, so no surprise here.
WKY over #15 WA St 3-2. WKY was Sweet 16 last year. We need to schedule them for the fall if they have any degree of returning players/high recruits.

All other matches were 3-0 sweeps except the following:

#11 Louisville 3-1 over USD
#12 Baylor 3-2 over Pepperdine
#6 WA 3-2 over Dayton

Factoring in who is left standing, that would put UD around 19-21 which leaves room for some good teams that didn’t make the dance and still have us in the Top 25. There is a big difference between a #6 seed and the #11 to #15 teams. There just is. Most years going into the tournament people say there are really only 5-6 teams capable of winning it all. There is just that separation between the Uber-elite teams and elite teams every year. We played an Uber-elite team and took them to 5.

[udisit19]

It’s great they seeded everything team this year, but they also seeded every team with very limited conference vs conference information. I think a lot of coaches are praising the “seeding the full tournament” because they are pushing for this in the future. But they must be aware that it’s very possible Dayton, with 15 chances in non-conference could have proved they were better than the 27th best team in this field.

Despite all the flaws of the system, Dayton played extremely well. Throw out the rough start in the first 10 minutes of this match and the performances were equal. If Dayton can hang with the best team in the PAC-12, they can hang with any team.

I believe Dayton’s best win in the NCAA tourney occurred in 2012 when Dayton beat Pepperdine on the west coast. They followed that up by losing in 3 to #5 Oregon. The similar match up against the then 2nd best of the PAC-12 is a fair comparison and Dayton’s 3-2 performance yesterday shows the strength of the 2020-2021 Flyers.

If Jaime, who has graduated, decides to return. And based on her response during the press conference it sounds like she will. The 2021 UD Flyers will be a very dangerous team. Bridget will be tough to replaced. Bridget possessed impressive court vision and defense. Swink played well too. Swink came up with some big blocks and found open court when we needed to get a kill. But it sounds like the incoming recruits are good. The freshman this year clearly were ready. The 2021 Flyers will be talented and deep.
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