Club volleyball competitive despite errors
It wasn’t their best tournament, but the Utah State men’s club volleyball teams managed sixth and seventh place at an 18-team Mountain West Volleyball Conference tournament at the University of Utah on Friday and Saturday.
“We didn’t play as good as we can,” said Head Coach Adam Longmore. “I’d go so far as saying we didn’t even play very well.”
Despite not playing well, the Aggie A team swept through pool play, going undefeated with victories over the Salt Lake Community College B team, the College of Eastern Utah, the University of Colorado B team and Utah Valley State College.
The Aggies started tournament play with a first-round bye, but then had a rematch against UVSC only an hour after defeating it. The match went three games, but the Aggies lost 2-1, putting them in the position of being able to finish no better than fifth.
“When we beat [UVSC] in pool play we had a good game plan and followed it,” Longmore said. “When we replayed them we still did some of the things we wanted to, but our ability to side-out fell apart. We made some uncharacteristic errors.”
Utah State rebounded in the next match to defeat Weber State University, but lost in its final match to the Air Force Academy to finish sixth.
“All the top seven or eight teams are evenly matched,” Longmore said. “It’s not that other teams are better than our guys, but we just beat ourselves.”
Despite the disappointment, Longmore said the team is able to take some positives from the victory.
“Knowing that we can be close when we’re not playing well gives us hope,” he said.
Middle blocker Joe Anderson said, “Hopefully this pushes us to do better. If we had won we wouldn’t have worried about improving.”
The opportunity for competition and to see other teams were also pluses, Anderson said.
“I think we have more talent than any other team,” he said. “Seeing the other teams play makes us realize we should beat them.
“Had we not gone, we wouldn’t have known where we stood.”
Although it didn’t have the pool-play success of the A team, going 2-2 with losses to Air Force and UVSC B and victories over BYU-Idaho and the University of Nevada Las Vegas, the USU B team performed well enough in the tournament to finish seventh.
In a rematch, the Aggies defeated BYU-Idaho to open tournament play. They then lost to both Utah and Air Force to set up a final match with Weber. The victory in their final match gave the Aggies seventh place, the best among B teams.
“I’m really proud of our B team,” Longmore said. “They really came together and played together as a team.”
One challenge the B team had to overcome was the addition of three new players.
“It took a couple of matches to get in cohesion, but after that we started to play good on Saturday,” said B team setter Cliff Plowman. “We can only go up. Hopefully we get better. I guess a lack of practice really hurt.”
The Aggies will now have a month until their next regional tournament in Arizona, Feb. 21 and 22. In the meantime, Longmore said the team might travel to Southern Utah University on Feb. 7 and 8 to play in a local tournament.
“If we have a lineup we feel good about, we might go down there and try a new lineup and try some things,” he said.
–slbk5@cc.usu.edu