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Monday, September 4, 2007
Hello Cal Volleyball Fans, MEET AND GREET THE TEAM THIS SATURDAY NIGHT! We're off to a pretty good start the season, winning our first five matches before suffering a loss at Colorado. More details on that later. Our first weekend of play was at home in the Molten Invitational. We faced three opponents from all over the country, with players from all over the world competing. Taking each match 3-0 gave us a lot of momentum and confidence in our game. I was able to freely sub players and we are so deep that we were able to continue playing at a high level with all sorts of player combinations. We brought that same momentum with us to Colorado and performed exceedingly well in the first two matches of the tournament, even posting a Cal record high .700 hitting percentage in our match against UNCW. That is almost unheard of in volleyball these days. In addition, playing at altitude can create problems of its own, with serving in particular being affected by the thin air. Even when you win big and in some senses, "easily", coaches and players know that there are always ways to improve our game. Unfortunately, until you are up against a really good opponent, some of those needs go undetected. Against Colorado, there were no glaring weaknesses. Little things went wrong and by the time we could fix them, momentum had shifted and we tried to play catch up most of the match. We had some bad breaks; some bounces on the line; and some unfortunate dead-ball breaks in the action that continued to hold us back. And we missed 17 serves. As Angie Pressey said to the Daily Californian, "We didn't play our A game." On a bright note, we out-blocked the Buffaloes 16 - 2. That is a huge night for our blockers and bodes well for the future. I can't take anything away from the Colorado team. They are very good and they were the only team to defeat Nebraska last year. While preparing to face CU, I found out that they were without the services of several starters including their setter in their two early losses. Sometimes, records do not reflect the true quality of a team. This weekend we are back at home, hosting another very competitive tournament. We play Utah State at 7 p.m. on Friday, Eastern Kentucky at noon on Saturday and then the finale against No. 12 Minnesota at 7 p.m. on Saturday night. This match will be televised live on the Comcast SportsNet Channel and then replayed several times during the week. After the Minnesota match, we will host our annual Meet and Greet the Team night. All fans are invited to the Haas Club Room after the match for some light snacks and a chance to meet the team and ask questions. Please come to Haas this weekend and support the team in our last home pre-season tournament. We love the noise and the home court advantage it provides us.
Until next time,
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