When We Were Good…
…we were very good indeed. In our second and fourth games against Dayton, we clicked well, played hard, kept our mistakes to a minimum. It was lovely to watch—and heart-stopping, in the fourth game, to keep the Flyers at bay, not to let them take the match when they clawed back, 24-24.
But when we were bad…we weren’t exactly horrid, but limp. Dayton ruled the first, third and final games. Overall, they hit .384 to our .228. We had predictable trouble with their All-American middle, Lindsay Fletemeir. At 6′6″, she had a good look at dozens of sets in the middle, made two attack errors but otherwise had 21 kills on 42 attempts.
It often came down to Dayton’s first touch on the ball. If the pass or dig came up to their setter at the net, she could put up a little two-ball and Fletemeir could work off our single blocker and put it down, over and over, often close to the ten-foot line. She went left, she went right, if we got two blockers on her she often went between them. It was the battle of the night—and OU can be proud that we stopped her often enough to take games two and four.
Twelve service errors—but six aces. (Dayton had the same ratio, with six and three.)
Ellen had 20 kills, Sue 13 and Meghan 12. Faith hit .500.
We had 6 blocks and they had 21. Ouch.
Statistics do not describe a match, however. Sprit was great, there were plenty of OU fans in the awkward Flyers gym (painful lighting; stands too removed from the court), we made some noise and gave Dayton a good run overall.
It was great to see Brian Wiegel in the stands, last year’s Zach Weinberg. These are the guys who do an enormous amount of work for the team, everything from putting up and taking down the nets to videotaping the matches and keeping stats.
It seems to me there’s a case to be made that we beat Western Michigan in the MAC Championship match because of Zach’s video and stat-keeping on Western’s semi-final match—which I assume Ryan and the other coaches studied feverishly well into that Saturday night. Well, I daresay there were some other elements at play as well.
Brian was just as lively and cheerful as ever. Is it possible that volleyball makes better people? Or is it that there’s something in the sport that draws great people to it? Anyway, a belated hats-off to a couple of great sports management guys, Brian Weigel and Zach Weinberg.
Now for the photos. The lighting was so bad I had to shoot almost everything from the floor. (Bumped the ASA to 1600, lowered the speed to 1/400th, shot everything at a wide-open 2.0, and still had to add some light with a photo program when I got done.) Still, some good perspectives. Such as these first two photos, which we could take, unfortunately, as The Story of the Match.
Michelle tipped some balls away from the blockers
And this one went down hard.
Meghan got on top of some
Ellen on a hit down the line:
Faith on one of her seven kills
And Sue pushing one through wth pure power.
And two from the backcourt:
