Loss teaches USU about dealing with serving and opponets size
Despite losing Tuesday’s match against the University of Utah, the Utah State University women’s volleyball team went away from the match having gained valuable experience to take into Friday’s match against California Polytechnic University.
“You always learn something. Winning or losing you always learn something,” USU head coach Burt Fuller said.
One aspect the team looks to focus on in their upcoming match is serving. In their road win against BYU last Wednesday, the Aggies were able to control the serve.
“We served them [BYU] better. We got them out of their first ball opportunities,” Fuller said. “Our serve put them in trouble more.”
Outside hitter Erin Cartwright said, “We didn’t serve strong enough [against Utah].”
Against Utah, the Aggies finished with four service aces and four service errors. Utah was able to handle the Aggie serves though, and effectively set the ball to their middle blockers with relative ease.
“They are bigger than us and we couldn’t rattle their serve receive,” Fuller said.
Setter Chelsi Neves said, “We couldn’t break their passing, they did a good job passing.”
Fuller said, “We need to make sure we serve the ball and use more of the court. [We need to serve] a little deeper, a little shorter, instead of dropping it right on the passers.”
In addition to serves, Fuller said the Aggies could have done better receiving Utah’s serves.
“We need to be just a little sharper on our serve receive,” Fuller said.
While Utah only had four aces, they picked up a potential game breaker on an Adrianne Drake service ace, giving the Utes the only game point they would need to capture the third game.
One additional positive the Aggies took from the game is learning how to play against bigger teams.
According to Utah’s game notes, the Utes have nine players 6-foot-1 and over, while the Aggies only have three.
“With the bigger teams we play, we know they’re going to get on a roll and we need to figure out how to stop them and break their run,” Neves said.
“We played real well against a big team like BYU. We stopped their hitters a few times and we played pretty good,” she said.