A Sea Of Red

Right now we have a 1-6 record which is certainly not good. I know the competition has been very tough to say the least and is certainly a few notches above what we face in the Big South. We have certainly shown most of the time to be very competitive against SEC, Pac10, and Big 12 competition but you would have thought that one of those losses should have been wins. In a lot of our matches we seem to fall apart at the end of some of these games or maybe the competition rises up. Hard to tell following the games on gametracker. Is our overall youth a factor here or is it just lack of talent? I guess there are some more opportunities to pick up quality wins and hopefully can beat the teams we are supposed to beat.

Not only have these been BCS league schools but often strong schools within these conferences. We have remained competitive despite our youth. I love seeing the aggressive scheduling by Coach Pinder. Even though the losses have piled up, the fact that we have stood toe-to-toe against these programs and not crumbled is a big boost to our confidence similar to what we experienced over the weekend in football. As the competition softens up, I fully expect our win totals to rise quickly.

I think it's all the above. Tough competition, youthfulness and to a lesser degree talent.

Sly's right Steve...these arent exactly St Mary's School for the Gifted teams we are playing here...Up until Penn State's run of dominance the Pac 10/12 produced some of if not the best volleyball in the country and you regularly saw national championship banners being raised out west. Georgia I think was an NCAA team last year. Kansas was conference mates with Nebraska in the Big 12 up until this year and they play some pretty good volleyball there too (heck I think the year we played Nebraska they went to the national semifinals). North Carolina was an NCAA qualifier and lost to eventual national runner up Cal. All that to say that yes we may be 1-6 but we have hung with some of the top teams in the country and that will serve (no pun intended) us well as we go into our home tournament this weekend and into Big South play in a little over two weeks

The losses we have had are not bad losses. We are scheduling teams that consistently win 20+ matches a year, compete in either BCS leagues or strong volleyball conferences, and will definitely help to prepare us to win the Big South and for, hopefully, the first round of the NCAA tournament.