Looking for pre-tournament surge
Timing is working well right now for the USU women’s volleyball team.
The Aggies (13-16, 6-8 in WAC play) are coming off of perhaps their best match of the season — a five-game come-from-behind victory over the Nevada Wolf Pack.
Now the trick will be to somehow carry that crowd-pleasing performance into this week’s final two regular season matches – at Boise State Thursday at 7 p.m., and at Idaho Saturday at 8 p.m.
If things work out the way the Aggies would want them to work out, they could be entering the WAC tournament next week as high as the fifth seed.
For that to happen, the Aggies definitely have to win Thursday and Saturday. Also, the San Jose State Spartans (17-11, 8-6), who are one spot ahead of the Aggies in the standings, will have to lose both of their matches this week.
That would put the two teams in a tiebreaker, which the Aggies would win because they defeated the Spartans in four games in Logan, while the Spartans beat the Aggies in five games in San Jose.
“We have to count on those guys doing not very well,” Aggie head coach Grayson DuBose said by telephone Tuesday evening. “It’s tough to tell exactly what will happen. If we can go 8-8 [in the WAC] that puts us in fifth place. That’s not so bad. That’s higher than we were picked.”
The preseason coaches poll had the Aggies tabbed to finish eighth, just one away from the bottom.
If the Aggies play this week against two teams behind them in the WAC standings the way they played last Saturday against the third-place team in the WAC, there is little doubt USU won’t end the season at .500 in WAC play.
“This is the time of year when you want to be playing well,” DuBose said. “We showed some real nice heart. If we can continue to play against teams with that kind of energy we have a good chance against anybody.”
The Aggies recorded a season-high .242 attacking percentage in the match, which bested the Wolf Pack’s .217.
On the other hand, the Aggies have had little success on the road, with only one win away from the Spectrum. That came Oct. 26 against the last-place Louisiana Tech Lady Techsters (6-25, 0-14).
But another one of the major advantages the Aggies had in their preparation last week against the Wolf Pack and in their preparation this week is a 100 percent healthy team.
“I’m happy to have [our team] relatively healthy,” DuBose said. “There was six of seven weeks there [during the season] where we didn’t have the whole team [in practice].”
Junior outside hitter Beth Hodge came back last Saturday from a leg injury that caused her to miss two matches to notch a season-high 20 kills to lead the Aggies in their comeback win.
-sbhislop@cc.usu.edu