Friday, September 5, 2008
The Jayhawk volleyball team will play its toughest match of the season so far Friday night against the No. 13 Oregon Ducks at the Jayhawk Invitational — at least on paper. But coach Ray Bechard has only one team on his mind — Utah Valley, which the team plays today at noon.
“Utah Valley is the only thing we’re concerned with right now,” Bechard said.
And with good reason. Even though Utah Valley started the year with two losses, the team posted an impressive 21-10 season in 2007, winning the Division I Independent Championship last year. It will be a tough way to open the season at home for the Jayhawks, who also will play 2-1 Central Florida to wrap things up Saturday afternoon.
For the Jayhawks, their main concern is to avoid the mistakes that plagued them against VCU in the season opener, and retain what went well against NC State, their lone victory this year.
“We haven’t had any issues with effort, the execution always isn’t as good as we’d like it to be,” Bechard said of the past week’s practices. “I really enjoy coming to the gym with this group everyday.”
Bechard said if they could now just match that level of effort with the same level of execution, the Jayhawks could accomplish some great things this year, namely an NCAA tournament birth. But as with Bechard, the players’ focus is the weekend at hand and finally being able to enjoy home-court advantage.
“Very excited,” senior Natalie Uhart said. “Being here in our gym will make us a little more comfortable.”
Uhart could notice the opening loss to VCU had a lot to do with a lot of young players having to step into the college game for the first time. While this has its benefits in the long run, there will always be some growing pains to start out with.
“We had a lot of young babies on the court, let’s just hope that is out of our system now,” Uhart said. “I want to see how the other girls will respond to the higher level of play.”
To not only compete with that higher level of opponent but to win, Bechard had his team work on what Bechard called “volleyball IQ” plays, along with blocking, footwork and first-ball kill opportunities and other little things he hopes the team has fine-tuned this week.
Although the inexperience was one reason the Jayhawks stumbled out of the gate against VCU, two of those inexperienced freshmen, Alyson Mayfield and Nicole Tate, made huge strides, with Mayfield leading the team in kills against VCU and Tate starting at setter and finishing with a total of 52 assists that weekend. Tate understands the value of what she learned that opening weekend, and hopes to use that to improve during the home opener.
“The first match I was a little nervous about,” Tate said. “There is always that pressure to perform from coaches and teammates to get better, but it’s good.”
As with Uhart, Tate can’t wait to get onto her home court and play at a high level.
“I am really excited, it’s going to be a fun, but tough weekend,” Tate said. “First is Utah Valley, so hopefully we get on them.”
With three quality opponents on tap for the Jayhawks in just two days, Bechard said there would be a lot of “very good volleyball” played this weekend.
— — Edited by Kelsey Hayes
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