The U volleyball team might not have collected wins against its arduous, pre-conference schedule, but the Utes are certainly improving because of it.
The Utes dropped back-to-back 3-1 decisions to No. 4 USC and No. 6 Florida on Friday and Sunday, respectively. Though the Utes dropped to 2-5 on the season — including a 1-4 record against top-25 opponents — their schedule has prepared them for the upcoming MWC schedule that begins on Thursday.
“It would have been awesome to win this one, but we are learning so much,” Kat Haynie said. “We may be losing now, but it’s going to pay off so much in the long run.”
On Friday night against the Trojans, the Utes started sluggish and fell to USC 30-14. The Utes, however, managed to make the rest of the match much more interesting.
The Utes jumped out to a 7-4 lead in game two and held that three-point advantage until USC tied the score at 22-22. Utah then jumped out to a 25-22 lead, punctuated by a Lori Baird kill, and then expanded its advantage to 28-24 late in the game. The Utes, however, would score no more as some shaky Ute passing allowed USC to score the game’s final six points and walk away with a two-games-to-love lead.
Despite the deficit, the Utes did not back down, and actually grew closer as a team before the crowd’s eyes.
“(Game two) kind of gave us a confidence boost going into game three,” said hitter Whitney Webb. “If we play Utah volleyball, we’re good.”
The Utes took advantage of a .278 hitting percentage and just five hitting errors to breeze past USC in game three 30-22.
In game four, USC took the momentum back. Utah held USC to a .142 hitting percentage through the first three games, but the women of Troy blew that mark out of the water by hitting .500 in game four as they ran with the game and the match.
“We battled USC tonight,” Launiere said after the game. “We can put our heads down because we lost to a really good team, or we can just keep plugging away — and we are getting better. Obviously we just need to become more consistent.”
Consistent is exactly what the Utes were on Sunday afternoon against Florida.
Utah came out battling the Gators swing for swing, resulting in what Launiere said was “the most complete match so far” for the Utes.
Utah hit the ground running and built a 7-2 advantage to start game one, before USC made a game of it with a 5-1 run of its own to make the match 8-7 early. Still, the Utes were able to maintain a lead until three consecutive Gator blocks gave them a 19-18 lead. Although the Utes traded points with USC for the remainder of the game, Utah was never able to secure a lead and eventually dropped the first game 30-28.
The Utes responded big in the second game.
After both teams traded mini-runs, Utah found a way to close out a game behind one of Haynie’s 17 kills and an attack error by Florida that drifted wide, which gave the Utes a 30-28 decision.
After the intermission, Florida came out fierce in game three. Despite the fact that the Utes keyed in — and generally succeeded — on not letting Florida go on big runs, the Gators did just that in game three and won convincingly, 30-18.
To Utah’s credit, the team did not go down without a fight and just about stole game four before allowing Florida to go on a 5-1 run to end the contest.
The Utes drastically improved offensively and emotionally, and look to carry the lessons they learned in pre-conference play into the MWC portion of their schedule.
“I completely feel like we’re ready (for conference play) 100 percent,” Launiere said. “We talked about that in the locker room. We are such a better team than we were against UCLA three weeks ago. We’re playing with a lot more confidence as a team.”
The Utes begin the MWC portion of their schedule with a two-game trip that pits the Utes against San Diego State on Thursday and UNLV on Saturday.