BKANR: Gopher Volleyball Review/Preview - Week 1

Do you remember last Friday? If you attended the Gopher's home opener you sure would have! It was hot and muggy outside but this was nothing compared to the temperature inside the Pavilion. You'd think a place originally meant for hockey would have some AC. They might not have had AC, but they did have the Big Ten / ACC Challenge! And while it doesn't work as a pun, they also had two new beautiful video scoreboards! Check out my picture gallery from the first game to see pictures of the new scoreboards.

Review - August 29th & August 30th, 2014

Game 1 - 8/29/2014 University of Minnesota vs. Notre Dame

(Big Ten / ACC Challenge)

via the Gopher Volleyball Facebook page: www.facebook.com/GopherVolleyball

Despite the heat, the Gophers opened up the season with a bang, defeating the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame in 3 straight sets. The Gophers, wearing their Gold jerseys, were led by #1 Daly Santana (Jr.) in kills (13), #4 Paige Tapp (So) in hitting percentage (.600), and blocks (7), #3 Katie Schau (So.) in assists (28), and #17 Dalianliz Rosado (Fr.) in digs (8). #16 Adrianna Nora (Sr.) also had a good night often being right in the action, especially on blocks and attacks. The unranked Irish played a surprising tight game giving the Gophers a real challenge in the first two sets before tiring out and losing the third and final set. Unfortunately this was a harbinger of things to come against Louisville the next day. Notre Damn would go ahead and lose to #6 Wisconsin the next day, also in 3 straight sets (25-16, 25-15, & 25-16).

Check out my gallery of pictures that I took from this game bellow.

Game 2 - 8/30/2014 University of Minnesota vs. University of Louisville

(Big Ten / ACC Challenge)

via grfx.cstv.com

I'm not sure if Coach Hugh McCutcheon was worried after the game against Notre Dame, but perhaps he should have been. The next day, shown live on BTN, they would face an unranked squad from the University of Louisville who the day before had lost to Wisconsin in three straight sets. The Cardinals must have taken motivation from that game because they would defeat the Gophers, wearing white jerseys, in 4 sets, all of them tight (25-21, 25-27, 27-25, & 28-26). The biggest problem the Gophers faced was failing to capitalize on opportunities with several unforced hitting and serving errors. While this was a surprising upset, the Gophers did have positives that they could take away from the game, chief among them the play of #8 Sarah Wilhite (So.) who set a match and career high with 25 Kills and 19 digs. Other players who recorded a strong outing were #1 Daly Santana (16 kills, 13 digs) and #3 Katie Schau (53 assists, 12 digs). #7 Hanna Tapp (So.), led the team with 4 blocks.

Check out my gallery of pictures that I took from this game bellow.

Preview - September 5th & 6th, 2014

(Yale Invitational)

via pbs.twimg.com

The Golden Gophers won't #PACKTHEPAV at home again until September 12th, but will instead go our East to dominate some Ivy at the Yale Invitational this coming Friday and Saturday (9/5/2014 & 9/6/2014) at you guessed it, Yale. The Gophers will first take on Yale University at 6:00 pm CST. Yale may be unranked but they are no push-over, having gone 20-5 last year. Their game against Minnesota will be their first game of the year; hopefully they will still have some kinks to work out so that the Gopher's can get their mojo back with a dominate win. The next day the Gophers will play a double-header, first against Boston College (2-1, 0-0 ACC) at 10:00 am CST and then against the University of Albany (0-3, 0-0) at 4:00 pm CST. All three of these games should be easy wins for the Gophers, BC was 9-23 last year while Albany was 9-19, but UL showed that the Gophers can be beat so watch out for Yale. My predication (based off of only what I read today), the Gophers go 3-0 to improve to 4-1 on the season. POINT-U!

via pbs.twimg.com

Not so fun note - Boston College's athletic site is built exactly like Gophersports.com, and I mean exactly.