Volleyball falls in straight games
The Mustang volleyball team (9-7, 3-3 WAC) was swept in adifficult 3-0 loss (30-26, 30-22, 30-16) to San Jose StateUniversity (12-6, 3-2 WAC) Thursday night at Moody Coliseum.
The team ended up with a disappointing .112 hitting percentage,including two players finishing with a negative hitting percentage.The Mustangs have been hitting at least .200 percent so far thisseason, and Head Coach Lisa Seifert said hitting at such a lowpercentage will never win games.
“Obviously we didn’t attack well,” Seifertsaid. “When you attack below .200 you can’t winmatches. But that wasn’t the only thing.
“A lot of balls hit the ground on serve receive, we hadservice errors, we didn’t block well. It wasn’t justone thing.”
SMU was pretty evenly matched with San Jose St. coming into thematch, and they didn’t think the loss was because theSpartans were better. The team believes they beat themselves.
“It was all us,” junior middle blocker Kelly Larkansaid. “It was definitely all us. We just haven’t meshedwell this season yet.”
San Jose St. was meshing well and it showed. The Spartansrecorded an impressive overall .285 hitting percentage with .326percent and .357 percent in the first and third games respectively.San Jose also blocked well with eight team blocks.
The Mustangs are now 3-3 in the WAC, and have plenty of time tomake this season a successful one with seven conference gamesremaining. Although they have several difficult matches ahead ofthem, the team is far from quitting.
“The goal right now is to peak at the WACtournament,” Seifert said. “The goal is to get betterevery game — to become more effective, more efficient. And weplan to do that. We aren’t quitters.”
The loss was especially difficult because the Mustangswhole-heartedly believed they would win, and the breakdown wasinternal. Lineup issues and team chemistry are among some of thetop issues the Mustangs will have to remedy to reach their goal ofpeaking at the WAC Championships.
“Right now we’re juggling the lineup — tryingto find the best connections,” Seifert said.”I’ve gone with the same lineup for 15 games, butwe’ve lost some of those. We’re trying to findband-aids for the leaks, so to speak.
“The problem is that there are several holes to close up.It’s more difficult when you have three or four problempositions as opposed to just one.”
The next WAC contestant the Mustangs face is the nationallyranked No. 3 University of Hawaii Rainbow Wahine at home onSaturday.
After an emotional loss to the Spartans, it may seem the team isin for another rough beating on their home court.
They aren’t looking at it that way though. On paper, theMustangs aren’t supposed to win so they’re going totake advantage of the opportunity to play without the mentalpressure they are confronted with in most games.
“Our game plan against Hawaii is to just go out and havefun,” Larkan said. “We always play really well againstHawaii, I don’t know why, but we do. There’s really nopressure to win, and we’ve got nothing to lose.”
A Mustang win against No. 3 Hawaii would be a historicalvictory, but however unlikely it is, the team isn’t sellingthemselves short.
“I think we just need to build our confidence up,”Larkan said. “We’ve had a rough start, but if we canget our confidence back, we should be able to win all of our gamesfrom here on out.”
The Mustangs will play undefeated Hawaii (15-0, 5-0 WAC) at 2p.m. Saturday at Moody Coliseum.
