Friday, Sep 13 Match Day!

Update: Had yoga this morning. Flipped on Live Stats and my Pirates are up but quickly go down and lose set one. Seven aces for HSU! Hard to beat a team when they only have to get to 18 but credit to the Cowgirls. Time to mow the yard. Would be great to listen to the match but it sounds like they are announcing underwater. Cru need to invest in more streaming bandwidth. Pirates need to figure out how to return a serve.

Yard is mowed. Caught the 4th set a bit. Looks like Pirates have settled down as we go to a fifth match. HSU’s defense is doing well. A number of long points going to them that normally go to the Pirates (this season). Video/Audio got a lot better, by the way. Moved to my computer and couldn’t find the match so luckily I didn’t kill it on my phone. I guess it went too long or something for their streaming system.

HSU is up large in the 5th and look like they will take this without too much of a fight.

12-6 HSU on a timeout. Jones and Underwood have just served and hit Southwestern off the court today. This loss (coming) will knock SU from the rankings. This will be the second ranked team HSU has beaten. Respect.

15-8 is the final. HSU hit 0.083. SU had more kills and digs. Teams were pretty even in blocks. It was all about the aces. 19 to 2 in favor of HSU. Just wow!

NCAA Scoreboard

The Cru are having an easy time with Hendrix. Up 1-0 and up big in the second.

Ouch. CC let’s one get by them. Lose the first set 32-30.

CC returns the favor. Win set two 28-26.

Eau Claire finishes out the last two sets pretty easily for the 3-1 win.

HSU up 2-0 on St Thomas. Good day to be a Cowgirl.

Dropped off a bit. Southwestern is playing and dropped the first set to Hendrix. Now up 2-1.

The HSU wins are interesting. Both Southwestern and St Thomas should be pretty good in the SCAC. Are we saying the 3rd best team in the ASC is better than maybe the 2nd best team in the SCAC? The St Thomas win was a sweep.

Concordia and Howard Payne are playing a double-header today. Concordia with the 4-set win in the first one. Concordia coming off a bad season while HPU up and coming. Concordia has to be happy with this one.

Lost the feed for SU. They got blown out in set 4 forcing another 5-set match for them. They are leading now.

Whew. Southwestern holds off Hendrix in 5-sets. Not the Pirates best day. They may have found a solid solution to OH2 with Kate Spinelli who led the team with 14 kills.

Whittier takes the first set against MIT but lose the next three.

CC gets a sweep of one of the other Concordia’s. Brooke Brilliant with 11 kills hitting just under 0.500.

Trinity lost the first two sets to Endicott. Yikes. NPI makes things different but in the past this would be a crushing loss for Trinity and the West. Trinity took set three but it’s a fight here. Trinity hitting 0.410 as a team but down 2-1. Trinity looks like they are rotating liberos today. Rodriguez is playing DS but she started game 1 as the libero.

CMS has an easy sweep against Puget Sound.

Endicott did not pancake that ball. Trinity still wins the point. Trinity gets set four looking for the reverse sweep.

Speaking of reverse sweeps, they are tough. It’s not that a team gets the 3rd and 4th set. They have the momentum and you’d think that this team would win most of the 5-set matches. I don’t feel that’s the case. It’s almost like the team that fought back just steps off the accelerator a bit and lose that final set. We’ll see if Trinity does this or finishes it.

TLU and Platteville are now in a 5th set.

UMHB/Dallas are 1-1. The fact that Dallas took a set off the Cru is the biggest surprise of the day for me so far.

Only 7 attacking errors for Trinity so far in this match. Crazy good.

Stevens Point beat Gust Adolphus in a surprise. I was wondering how good Point was this year but that’s a great win. Will Region VIII devour themselves so that NPI doesn’t like most of them?

CMU beats Salisbury. I have Salisbury ranked. Ouch.

UWP gets the turn 8-7 on TLU.

Howard Payne looking for their own reverse sweep on Concordia in their second match of the day. They are in a fifth there, too.

Endicott gets the turn 8-7 on Trinity.

11-7 UWP and a long rally that ends on a bad call in favor of TLU.

12-10 Endicott and Trinity and Maddie Fate get hosed on a push call. One direction. Should have been a kill.

UWP 15-9. Volleyball gods were not happy with that call, I guess.

13-11 Endicott. Jenna Rodriguez up to serve. Probably the best server on the team. They really need at least one point here, if not two. Tigers hitting 0.410 on the match and will probably lose.

Nope. 14-11.

Endicott gets the upset. A loss at home for Trinity is very rare. Four losses in a row during the regular season last happened when????

LETU looks like they will get a sweep over McMurry. The ASC is not treating the SCAC well today.

Juniata beat Hope 3-1 as the two best teams in the country (probably) went at it today. JC hit 0.291 as a team. 8 total blocks. 8 service aces. Hope hit 0.162 with only 4 total blocks and 3 aces. Kennedy Christy (I’m her #1 fan) had 20 kills and hit 0.362 with 2 aces. Coley and Podolan each had double-digit kills. Foley had 46 assists and 23 digs. The libero with too many names had 29 digs. Addie VanderWeide had 17 kills and only 3 attack errors. No one else on the team had double-digit kills. Foley and VanderWeide were your Co-Player of the Years last season. Both did well here. The consecutive win streak continues for Juniata. They have Oshkosh tomorrow and if they don’t lose there then it probably doesn’t stop until the Elite 8, at the earliest. Dominate team right now.

Chris Newport went 2-0 today as they right their ship (anyone get that?). Those two wins were against Tufts and Calvin (sweep).

Concordia holds off HPU. Another reverse sweep attempt failed. I think that’s like 4 today.

Dallas is giving UMHB everything they have in this match. Crazy. How have they not won a match? They’ve won 4 sets all season.

25-22 win for UMHB who take the match in 4-sets. All credit in the world to Dallas for making this close.

I had an extra CC match listed below but I deleted it. Probably means my schedule tomorrow has one less CC match.

Five late games on-going. ETBU should get a sweep over CLU. UCSC is leading big in set one over PP. GFU just finished off Linfield 3-1. So, four matches left. PLU is playing a non-DIII team.

Taking a trip next week. I’ve got like 10 days of Match Days sitting in my scheduler right now. Fun putting all that together. Not.

CLU read my previous note and decided to take set three from ETBU. Tigers still lead 2-1.

I think UCSC/Pomona is the only match going. They are in the fifth if still playing. Live stats isn’t working. But…I’m going to bed.

Random Thoughts: More conference play, although in limited fashion, is starting to condense our schedule. Makes it a bit easier on me although in a couple of weeks we’ll be tired of conference games.

UMHB is hosting a tournament that will give us some nice matches. Our leadoff match is HSU/Southwestern. HSU is a good team that can challenge Southwestern.

Colorado College heads over to Eau Claire for more tough matches. I highlighted the Tigers and how NPI might view them this week. Needless to say, CC needs to come out of here with wins and it starts with maybe their toughest match of the weekend.

TLU continues their Ohio Wesleyan Tournament. They should be fine with Heidelberg although UW-Platteville will be a tough match.

The Cal Lu Fornia Tournament is this weekend. ETBU is there and will get some incredible matches. Today it’s Pomona-Pitzer and Cal Lutheran. They should take both but neither will be easy.

Whittier heads to Tufts for their tournament. With the old selection system, this was a smart play to gain inroads into the New England Region. Now, it’s very risky. Whittier has had a nice start but some tough matches ahead this weekend. I’m hoping they don’t go 0-3 but that would be the odds on favor result. Good thoughts out for the Poets.

CMS/Puget Sound is a nice match. Not sure where UPS is right now but this would normally be a sweep for CMS. Can the Loggers make it close?

Trinity is hosting a tournament and get Endicott today. Endicott is one of the rare New England teams that travel. Lots of respect for that program. Trinity will show them their form of respect, I’m sure.

Linfield/GFU is a NWC match. GFU should take it but this could be really close.

No trip to a gym for me this weekend. The (hot) wife and I have a trip planned next week.