TEMPE, Ariz.-Things didn’t go quite according to plan this weekend for the U volleyball team.
The Utes (1-2) dropped their first two matches in the Sun Devil Classic, falling to Arizona State and San Diego before finally salvaging the weekend set with a sweep over the Ohio Bobcats Saturday evening.
Utah is considered the favorite by coaches and media to win the Mountain West for the third straight season, but the team’s stunning 0-2 start is sure to surprise more than a few.
Noticeably absent from the Utes’ lineup was junior Liana Bortoto, a transfer from UVSC who was expected to start and be a major contributor for the Utes this season.
There is a problem with Bortoto’s academic status, and she may be ineligible. The team was notified just prior to the tournament, and she was not able to make the trip. Her status is pending.
Her absence obviously hurt the team’s chemistry, as was evident by its opening-round match Aug. 29 against the host Sun Devils. The Utes looked flat and out-of sync throughout the match.
ASU was victorious in both of the first two games, and won each in convincing fashion, 30-21 and 30-23. Utah tried to stage a comeback, squeaking by with a 30 28 Game 3 win. But in the end, the team just wasn’t itself, and the Utes dropped the match.
During the match, Ute senior Kim Turner, the MWC’s preseason Player of the Year and an Arizona native, set the U’s all-time block assists record as she recorded No. 435 of her illustrious career.
Needless to say, head coach Beth Launiere wasn’t pleased with the way her team looked.
“It was really disappointing, and losing Liana just kills us,” Launiere said. “We obviously needed her in there. But, this was an extremely tough environment for us to open the season, and [the Sun Devils] have a style that we haven’t seen. They did some very unorthodox things. But I think that if we had a little more time to prepare for this team, and this style of volleyball, we could have beaten them.”
The next morning, the Utes took on the San Diego Toreros, the eventual tourney champions with a perfect 3-0 weekend record.
Their confidence obviously shaken, the Utes once again didn’t play up to their expectations against USD. The Toreros dominated the first two games (30-18, 30-16), to take a commanding lead that Utah wouldn’t quite be able to overcome.The Utes staged a furious comeback in games 3 and 4, winning a pair of hotly contested games to set up a pivotal game 5.
San Diego came out strong in the deciding game, winning 15-7 to send Utah to an early 0-2 hole, its first such finish since 1994.
And just five hours later, the Utes were back on the floor to take on Ohio, a team that had defeated Arizona State earlier in the day.
Utah looked like a completely different squad against the Bobcats, rolling to a three-game sweep to win its first game of the season and avoid what would have been the team’s first 0-3 start since 1989. The victory capped off a difficult weekend in positive fashion.
“We really settled down for this match. Obviously after those first two matches, it hurts your confidence, but we settled down and we were able to use our strengths for this match,” Launiere said. “We really improved our serving and our passing, and our defense as well. Defensively, we weren’t where we should have been for those first two.”
The Utes will be glad to get back to Crimson Court this weekend, when they host the Utah Classic.
“This is just too tough a schedule to open a season,” Launiere said. “But we got some good competition, which is much better than just playing a few easy games. Some of the things we didn’t do well, we haven’t worked on that much yet. Our weaknesses were exposed, and we know what we need to do to improve. We’re definitely still good enough to win the conference-we’re just not there yet. But we can still win this thing.”
At the end of the match, Turner was the lone Ute to be named to the All-Tournament team. In three matches, Turner amassed 48 kills in addition to 23 digs and 16 blocks.
But one of the real stories of the weekend was sophomore Shelly Sommerfeldt, a new starter at outside hitter who saw limited playing time in her first active season in 2002.
Sommerfeldt was a revelation in Tempe, notching a team-high 17 kills in just three games against Ohio. For the weekend as a whole, she had 42 kills, second-best on the Ute roster. “That’s such a hard position that she’s playing, a lot of people don’t understand that,” Launiere said. “She going to be a really good offensive player for us.”