Men’s volleyball falls to top-ranked teams
After sweeping through the opening round of pool play, the Utah State University men’s club volleyball team was tripped up by two top-ranked teams finishing third in its second conference tournament of the season.
The Aggies, currently No. 9 in Division II, lost in the second round of pool play to Utah Valley State College and the University of Utah, No. 3 and No. 4 respectively, in Division I.
Utah, host of the Northern Region Mountain West Volleyball Conference Tournament, defeated the Aggies again in the single elimination bracket.
USU A team co-captain Adam Longmore said, “We lost, but when I look at how little we’ve practiced and the teams we played against, we’re really in pretty good shape.”
Utah State began pool play Friday defeating all three teams in its pool. The Aggies won 2-0 over the UVSC B team, Southern Utah University and Washington State University.
Coming out of their pool undefeated, the Aggies were put into a pool of No. 1 seeds Saturday. USU lost 2-0 to both Utah and UVSC.
“They beat us up pretty good in the morning,” Aggie A team co-captain Greg Jorgenson said.
Following the completion of pool play, teams were placed into a single elimination bracket.
In the first round, the Aggies met UVSC B, winning again, 2-1. A rematch awaited the Aggies in the second round, where USU met Utah for the second time of the day.
Utah defeated the Aggies 2-0 in the quarterfinal game to eliminate USU from the tournament.
Jorgenson said the Aggies were starting out slow in the first game of the matches and then playing better in the second game.
“We played relatively tough,” he said. “We just couldn’t get over the hump.”
Longmore said one area the Aggies are working to improve is their mental game. The offense plays well but when the team starts to break down mentally, its passing breaks down, he said.
“We need to mentally build each other up,” Longmore said. “Everybody expects a lot out of themselves. When we make a mistake we’re really hard on ourselves.”
Jorgenson said, “We just can’t mentally pull it together from the start.”
The Aggies will resume play Friday and Saturday in a tournament hosted by UVSC. Utah State will go up against in-state teams in the non-conference tournament.
The next conference tournament for the Aggies will be the championships April 5 and 6, hosted by Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff.