Women of Troy face tough road challenge in Stanford
After its four-set defeat at the hands of Washington this past Sunday, the USC women’s volleyball team will have to regroup quickly as it heads to Palo Alto, Calif. to take on Stanford.
Fab frosh · Freshman outside hitter Ebony Nwanebu has performed superbly this season, posting 210 kills, good for second-most on the team. – Ralf Cheung | Daily Trojan
Wednesday’s match against the No. 5 Cardinal (15-4, 8-2 Pac-12) marks a turning point in the season for the No. 8 Women of Troy (18-3, 8-2). The conference schedule is now halfway finished, and although USC has put itself in a great position to become conference champions, it is clear that the team will not be able to cruise to the championship easily.
After winning its first seven conference matches, the squad dropped three straight sets against Arizona on Oct. 20 and lost for the first time this season at home against the No. 3 Huskies on Sunday.
Today’s showdown is also the first midweek match in over a month for the Women of Troy, as the team will now have to play on Wednesdays and Fridays throughout the most of the remainder of the regular season. Though the one-day gap between games is nothing new for the team, games in the middle of the week are sure to put extra stress on a squad that has to worry about classes as well as winning volleyball matches. USC head coach Mick Haley saw the effects of this stress firsthand in the match against Washington.
“Our net defense was sloppy,” Haley said. “That’s the hardest of the skills, but it might be due to mental fatigue. We’re right in the middle of midterms, and I think it might be carrying over to the court.”
Stanford — a team ostensibly going through its own share of academic responsibilities — will be a tough task for USC, especially in the middle of the week on the road. The Cardinal, like the Women of Troy, have lost only two matches in Pac-12 play, but have yet to lose at home.
In their previous match against the Cardinal, the Women of Troy prided themselves on efficiently hitting and blocking Stanford’s hit attempts. They outhit Stanford by a wide margin of .358 to .245 on their way to a sweep at the Galen Center. USC senior middle blocker Alexis Olgard, who was largely held in check in the Washington match, posted a monster line in the Oct. 4 tilt against Stanford with nine kills and a .643 hitting percentage. The setters will have to look to set her up at the net to exploit the weaknesses in Stanford’s defense.
Along with Olgard, USC will have plenty of other options with the ball. One of the strengths of USC’s team this season has been its ability to spread the ball around to multiple attackers over the course of the match. In the first match against Stanford, three outside hitters — sophomore Samantha Bricio, freshman Ebony Nwanebu and senior Sara Shaw — each had 10 kills or more. Middle blockers Olgard and junior Hannah Schraer weren’t too far behind with nine and eight kills, respectively.
With a deep bench, there is potential for an even larger distribution of scoring. Haley has even hinted at the idea of bringing new players off the bench to try to get the offense rolling when things come to a halt on the court.
“I hope it brings spark to our team and gets our energy going,” Haley said of playing more of his bench in the upcoming game. “We’re really just looking for more scoring. We want more points and more production.”
Perhaps most important to tonight’s match, however, is not statistics or individual performances, but team effort when adversity hits. Even in the sweep against the Cardinal, the sets were not always easy wins for the Women of Troy. Tonight’s match should be no different.
“We’ve been pushing ourselves too hard,” Haley said of his players’ reactions to their recent slump. “We can’t panic when we don’t play like we want to.”
With Stanford’s recent success, especially at home, USC cannot expect to coast to a win in tonight’s match. Though the benchmark of a team’s success is its performance at the end of the season and not in the middle, a lot is riding on this match as well as the next few to follow.
“The next three weeks will define us,” Haley said. “We lost at Arizona, we lost at home. Now we have to correct, make changes and show we’re getting better.”
The match will begin tonight at 7:30 p.m. at Stanford’s Maples Pavilion and will be broadcast on the Pac-12 Networks.
Follow Kurt on Twitter @legen_daryKurt