The Lady Vols just finished a spring tournament at Miami University. They lost to Bowling Green 3-0 (25-21, 25-23, 25-23) — yes 25! I’ll discuss my thoughts on that later! They lost to Miami (OH) 3-0 (25-20, 25-23, 25-16). And they beat Cleveland State 3-0 (25-19, 27-25, 25-20). Details and a few pictures tomorrow when I get back to Knoxville!

UPDATE: All the pictures turned out awful. But I did spend a few minutes of game set (another new NCAA rule to be discussed later!) three of the Miami match testing out a new video camera I recently picked up. Here’s about a minute of video featuring a few kills from Nikki Fowler, Leah Hinkey, Kylie Marshall, and Milan Clarke. (NOTE: video has been reposted after a reader said it did not work for them.)

A few notes about the matches:

• About half way through last season it looked like Fowler and Jaye Loyd were trying out new serves. Now it’s appears that in the off-season that has been something the whole team is working on. From the very start of yesterday’s matches you could see the team was serving much more aggressively. Though in the tiny sub-gym it was obvious to everyone present that Coach Rob Patrick still believes they have some work to do in that department!
• The team was showing a lot of extra hustle. Whenever an errant ball needed to be chased down every single player on the court — including those way too far away to get there in time — went after the ball.
• In set three vs Bowling Green the team came from well behind to make it close. Makes you wonder if the outcome would’ve been different if they still played to 30.
• Against Cleveland State the team had some really good blocking. Also of note, Chloe Goldman sat out the match while Marshall donned the libero jersey.

Next up for Tennessee is a tournament at North Carolina this weekend. The weekend after that is the beach tournament at Florida.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 29th, 2008 at 4:03 pm.