DAYTON (OH) — The first goal for the Flyer Volleyball team has been accomplished. Every team starts the season with their first goal of being conference champions. The Flyers won the regular season conference championship and last weekend they clinched a spot in the NCAA tournament when they won the A10 tournament championship against Xavier. The A10 had a poor RPI this year and it is possible that UD would not have received an NCAA bid without a victory. As Kelly said last week you could spend ten minutes giving reasons why UD should receive a bid but also argue against it. Thankfully we will not be having that discussion in the next week.

The Flyers dominated the match on Friday against Duquesne. The Flyers hit .400 points better than Duquesne and held their middle blockers to only 7 kills. Kelly had said after a previous match with Duquesne that they had the best middle hitter in the A10. I think he knew that this would inspire Megan Campbell who had six kills in only 14 attempts. When asked if Megan held her own in this match Kelly grinned and said “YES”.

The match on Saturday was expected to be much tougher. I gave up my seat on Press Row because I honestly didn’t picture myself sitting stoically on Press Row during a Xavier match. Xavier runs a very very fast paced offense with sets below the height of the out of bounds pole. Because the sets are so low it is difficult to block them unless the timing is perfect. So I asked Kelly to give fans a feeling for what Xavier is trying to accomplish on offense:
　
“Obviously they want to play fast. They have smaller hitters and in order to score they need to beat the block and back-court before the entire defense has time to set up. One way to counter that is with great serving. We served really tough (without many errors). I thought the team did a great job of going hard at the sidelines and deep corners. Yvonne tweaked a couple of things with her serve going into the week and it really paid off during the match. She’s never served better! Our offense is obviously different than theirs. We have bigger attackers. We want them to be able to hit high and with great range. In order to do that, the set nets to be a little higher. We were trying to go hard at the line and hard angle around the 10 foot line. Two different offensive philosophies dictated, for the most part, based on personnel”.

When you play a team for the fourth time in a season you know each other’s tendencies. So I asked Kelly when you play a team that knows your tendencies do you switch things up a little to try and go away from tendencies or do you simply try to do what you do best?

“A little bit of both. We switched who Rachel and Yvonne started next to going into the weekend for a variety of reasons. When Xavier, for some reason, chose not to scout our semi-final match, they had not seen that we made this change. They chose to start the match in a rotation that ended up having Yvonne on their slide attacker – big advantage for us. Serving-wise it was the same strategy as our prior matches – we just executed better. Offensively, we changed things a lot. Their middle was following where the pass took Sam. Sam was supposed to set the opposite direction where she was moving. If she was moving forward, she set back. If she was moving back, she front set. This was regardless of whether she was moving off the net or not. It’s a basic strategy but was used to counter how they chose to defend us. Usually our choices, and the plays we run, have a lot more to it, but in this match was very different. Occasionally Sam chose to set the “hot hitter”, but that was the strategy. It’s the first time all year we did that. The hitters knew which areas of the court to attack (Line, Tool, Cut, and Tip/Roll over the block). Xavier is really good defending the attack in the seam and cross-court – unfortunately that is about 80% of the court!”

“The shot choices did not change from our previous match – we just executed A LOT better. We hit over .300 through the first 3 games – which is incredible against that defense! The change in set choices (different from previous matches) and the execution of our hitters (same strategy, better execution) was the reasons for our increase in hitting efficiency. Defensively, we were making adjustments all night long. This match was a lot of fun because both teams were making a lot of adjustments. Blocking and back row defense have to work in concert together. In the beginning we chose to take certain shots away with our block and have them funnel their attacks to certain areas of the court. At times there were some silly errors by attackers, that was due to so many different looks defensively. You really saw that with their back-row attacks. We ALWAYS block the back-row attack with 2 or 3 blockers. We chose to block with 1 early on and pick up all of their tips and then later we kept all of our blockers down. They had many more errors from behind the 10 foot line than they usually do, so that seemed to pay off well for us. Late in the match we changed our block on the front row attackers and everyone saw the dramatic result – 7 blocks in the 4th set!”

One complaint mentioned by fans is that Paige wasn’t on the all tournament team. She certainly played GREAT and could have been included but I don’t see how Samantha Selsky or the Xavier setter could have been removed from the all tournament list. So I asked Kelly about his thoughts on Paige’s play during the tournament:

“Paige has been great all season long! She’s always been a hard worker, but she’s more consistent than she’s ever been, especially in practice. The Libero position is very difficult. The serving is so much tougher in college than it is in high school. It’s a very difficult transition as a freshman. Many people also don’t understand how to grade that position. People see a lot of digs and say, “she’s great”, or not many digs and say, “she’s not so great”. In our match with X there were 168 serve receive passes. The two Libero’s passed 31 of those. 137 went to the other passers. Nobody wanted to serve either of them. Paige passed a 2.65 and 80% perfect – those are freaking awesome numbers! Their Libero passed a 2.14 and 55% perfect. Our goal is for our passers to pass a 2.40 (out of 3.00) and 60% perfect. As a passer, a lot of times it harder when very few balls are served at you, it doesn’t allow you to get into a rhythm. That is probably why their Bro shanked that ball late in the 4th. I can guarantee you this, Paige didn’t put one thought into making or not making the All-Tourney Team. There is not a more team-oriented player on her team, but I agree with you, she had a phenomenal tournament!”

The student turnout wasn’t huge but the Red Scare was AWESOME. So I asked Kelly about the Red Scare and Pep Band. By the way I really like the new Pep Band Shirts

“Nobody is better…. period! Yvonne said it all in her post-match interview that is on our Facebook page. I love the creativity, energy, consistency, and costumes. It’s what college athletics is all about!!”

This week the Flyers host Notre Dame on Friday. This should be a very good match because Notre Dame will be trying to qualify for an at large bid to the NCAA tournament. If the Flyers win they could manage to host the first round of the tournament. It is doubtful that I will attend as I have to work Friday night.

Major congrats to Yvonne Marten for going out as A10 champion and A10 Tournament MVP. But, Yvonne has more work to accomplish. Hopefully Yvonne will be playing for several more weeks!

A quick reminder that the volleyball team has invited fans to attend the NCAA Volleyball Selection show at Cadillac Jacks in Centerville. The selection show begins at 6pm on Sunday so I would plan on being there around 5:45.