Time Out
ESU volleyball team remains undefeated, but a lost set dampens home opener
By C.J. Moore
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Other than the third set, it was business as usual Friday night at White Auditorium for the Emporia State volleyball team.
The third-ranked Hornets beat Missouri Western 3-1 in their home opener, but that third set 25-13 loss ruined the night for ESU coach Bing Xu.
Xu called two time outs during the third set — he rarely calls time outs — and Xu said he got upset with the team for the first time in his career.
“I could tell they started losing their mind a little bit and losing their focus, because the first two games we killed them,” Xu said.
“When Bing’s mad,” Brittney Miller said, “you know you’ve messed up.”
The way the Hornets have started this season — now 12-0 — Xu and his players expect close to perfection. They started off strong with 25-16 and 25-14 wins in the first two sets, but the third set was tainted from the start.
Missouri Western (7-7, 2-2 MIAA) jumped out to a 4-0 lead and the Hornets never got any closer than three points after that.
“I don’t know what happened,” Arica Shepard said. “I don’t know if our focus wasn’t there, or we just overestimated them again. I don’t know what happened, but we had too many errors in a row and it just went downhill from there.”
In their huddles, Shepard said she and her teammates kept telling each other to focus, but they could never string together a run to get back in the game.
“It was very surprising and disappointing for all of us,” Miller said. “We all knew better, and we just got in a little funk and lost momentum. We need to still work on things obviously and not let that happen to us.”
Xu gave his team several motivational speeches — or get-right yell sessions — and the Hornets responded in the fourth game.
“He was pretty mad,” Shepard said. “No one made eye contact with him.”
The Hornets avoided a fourth-set time out by taking the lead 3-2 on a Missouri Western error and leading the rest of the way in the fourth set, which they won 25-14.
After falling behind 2-0, Miller tied the game with two straight kills. Miller was one player who didn’t draw the coach’s ire after the match. She had eight kills in the fourth set and tied with Shepard for a match-best 18 kills, a season high for Miller.
“She had a really good performance, and whenever she was in, is when I feel like we did the best,” Shepard said.
Miller and Shepard’s powerful spikes overwhelmed Missouri Western, which is nothing out of the ordinary. Miller had one spike hit off the shoulder of a Missouri Western player and nearly knock her over. She also displayed impressive hang time on a couple of tip kills.
“I think she played fantastic,” Xu said. “She really showed up tonight. She’s the main hitter for us right now.”
Megan Lueger also added 10 kills for the Hornets, and Brianne Boner had eight kills and five blocks. Ting Liu had 52 assists and four kills.
Amy Byfield led the Hornets with 16 digs. Jenna Snook had 14 digs, and Shepard had 13 digs to along with her 18 kills, which gave her a double-double for the fifth straight match.
Emporia State improved to 2-0 in the MIAA and is back in action today at 4 p.m. against Northwest Missouri at White Auditorium.
After Bing finished talking to his team Friday night, the players stayed in the locker room and had a brief meeting, the theme being that what happened in the third set cannot happen again.
“That’s the character we cannot have,” Xu said. “You want to be a top team, you have character, you have top-team character. You’re not going to be a team that fools around.”