Women of Troy look to salvage season
In their last regular season game of the season, the Women of Troy played a tough five-set match before they succumbed to their crosstown rival UCLA — just six days after USC’s football team also suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of the Bruins.
Three-peat · Junior outside hitter Samantha Bricio was recently named to the Pac-12 First Team for the third straight year. The Guadalajara, Mexico, native will lead USC into to NCAA Tournament this weekend. – Brian Ji | Daily Trojan
With the regular season over, the Women of Troy finished with an even record of 15-15 and a conference record of 8-12. Though USC had one of the toughest schedules in the country, this team did not live up to expectations and had to fight to make the NCAA Tournament.
“We really expected to dominate and be in the hunt with Stanford and Washington,” said head coach Mick Haley. “We figured one of us would 19-1, the other 18-2 and last team would be 17-3, but that didn’t happen. The kids are still getting better and the setting is getting better with the new setters.”
This season has been filled with changes and injuries from the get-go. At the beginning of the season, freshman Lauryn Gillis started at outside hitter but sophomore Elise Ruddins stepped in and flourished at that position later. She became a great option when Bricio was in the back row.
After a slow start in conference, the Women of Troy changed their traditional 6-2 offense into a 6-2/5-1 hybrid. In this new offense, Haley removed senior setter Hayley Crone and used senior outside hitter Emily Young as a front row setter. This was a tough decision to make but as the season progressed the team started to gel and play better in this new system.
Most college programs have to go through their share of illness and injuries, but the Women of Troy were struck with the injury bug early. Before the season even started, they lost their star sophomore outside hitter Ebony Nwanebu for an extended period of time due to a back injury. They also lost defensive specialist Anne Marie Schmidt in the middle of conference play due to an undisclosed illness.
But just like the football team, the Women of Troy continued to pick themselves off the mat on several different occasions and kept working hard.
“People finally realized that they needed to have sense of urgency,” said senior middle blocker Hannah Schraer. “People started working harder in practice, and there were switches made, but everyone kept working hard.”
This USC team is extremely young, with 11 underclassmen, and the teammates continued to learn and improve as they played together. At the end of the season, the Women of Troy started to show what they are capable of accomplishing. Needing a win to become eligible to make the postseason, the Women of Troy traveled to Tucson to take on the Arizona Wildcats and won in a tough four-setter.
On Nov. 30, the Women of Troy’s postseason hopes were held in the balance by the NCAA selection committee. For the 24th consecutive time the Women of Troy made the tournament. This year, the NCAA selection committee chose an unprecedented 10 Pac-12 teams in the 64-team tournament. Luckily, USC was ranked 10th in the Pac-12.
The Women of Troy got placed into the bracket with the No. 2 overall seed Texas and No. 7 overall team, North Carolina.
“USC has a very favorable draw considering we were just hanging on the wire and I am very happy with the position that we have,” Young said. “We can definitely make it to regionals and then the Final Four.”
The Women of Troy’s first round matchup in Minneapolis will be against Coastal Carolina, a team that comes into the NCAA Tournament after beating No. 1 seed Radford in the Big South Championship. The Chanticleers have a record of 25-6 and are led by freshman outside hitter Leah Hardeman and setter Sam Skryd. In the 5-1 offense, Skryd has 1,073 assists on the season and 306 digs and her favorite hitter is Hardeman.
Hardeman has 464 kills on the season which averages out to 4.03 kills a set. She also has 2.82 digs per set and 48 total blocks on the season. Another dangerous hitter for the Chanticleers is middle blocker Katie Martin, who has 71 blocks and 223 kills. For the Women of Troy to be successful, they have to slow down both of these big hitters down.
If the Women of Troy get past the Chanticleers, they will have to face the winner of the North Carolina and Hampton contest in the second round, which will be no easy test. Though the regular season did not go as expected, a deep run in the NCAA tournament can change everyone’s mind.