This weekend the UW volleyball team will host Michigan Friday night and Michigan State Saturday night at the Field House. The Badgers are now ranked No. 22 in the nation and have an overall record of 17-6 and 9-3 in the Big Ten. The Badgers have fallen to second place in the Big Ten conference and hope that through strong play this weekend, they will walk away with two victories.
The Badgers are coming off a tough loss to the first-place Gophers and they need to gain momentum this weekend against the Wolverines and the Spartans to be a contender.
“We had a pretty tough match at Minnesota [last] Friday,” head coach Pete Waite said. “After splitting the first two games, we weren’t playing great but we were doing some good things. [We] came to the third game and came from far behind — I think we were up 28-27 and we had a couple service errors [that] kind of threw us off right there and gave the points right back. Had we won that game in the third, I think it would have been a much different match. After that, we had a really hard time trying to keep up with them.”
The last time the Badgers met these two teams the weekend ended in a split, with a victory over Michigan and a loss to Michigan State.
“We have to tell the team that this weekend — Michigan and Michigan State — is huge for us,” Waite said. “We still need to finish up the Big Ten season as best we can [and] hope somebody else knocks off Minnesota, and we’ll still have a shot at the title, but its going to be tough. Michigan and Michigan State are very, very good teams. We lost at Michigan State and went five with Michigan so we know it’s going to be a battle.”
Friday night the Wolverines (16-7, 8-4) will be looking to increase their standing in the Big Ten. Senior middle hitter Erin Moore leads the pack of Wolverines. She is the leading candidate for the Big Ten’s Player of the Year award as the conference’s most complete player. She ranks among the top four in three different categories in league matches: blocks, hitting percentage and kills. Last weekend against Purdue she tied her career high of 28 kills.
The Badgers will also look out for outside hitter Jennifer Gandolph. She is posting the highest kills per game and blocks per game totals her career in 2003, averaging 3.98 and 3.38, respectively.
The Spartans of Michigan State (17-6, 9-3) and the Badgers have a long history. Last time these two teams met, the Spartans pulled off the victory three games to one. The Badgers are looking to not make the same mistakes and come out intense.
“There is just a lot of tension between these two teams,” setter Morgan Shields said. “It goes back a long, long way so it is really easy to get excited about playing them anywhere.”
The Spartans are coming off a win Wednesday night against the Wolverines. Outside hitter Kim Schram led the Spartans with 24 kills in the match, to go along with seven defense digs.
“There are a lot of really good athletes on both of these teams and I think the only thing you can do is just try to contain them,” Shields said. “They are going to get their really big kills, they are great players, but it is being able to handle the rest of the team and being able to recover after they’ve got a run or a really great play. They are really great athletes but we have to be able to handle the whole team.”
In practice this week the Badgers focused on things that did not go well against the Gophers and brought the game back to the basics.
“We are working on pursuing balls, and better ball control on crazy plays,” Shields said. “This weekend we are going to have to focus on hitting around Michigan State’s strong blocking. Against Michigan we are going to have to stay focused the whole time, they are a really high-energy team and come at you really quick. We have to stay intense and work hard both matches.”
Every match for the Badgers will prove to be crucial for them as they head towards the end of the regular season and into the playoffs.
