Match Thread: PSU @ UCF - Saturday, Aug. 28, 7:30 p.m.

I was impressed a lot by both Holland and Kuerschen versus UCF.
Holland is filling in very nicely for Gray in the blocking and hitting department.
We are still going to be missing Gray's serving, although, Kuerschen seems to be a very good server.
I hope she is consistent enough to replace the loss of Gray in that department.

I don't remember the misconnects with Hord, but I have noticed that sometimes Gabby tries to do too much with a ball.  I've seen her try to set the middles when she's back 6-8 feet.  The set can be done, but it has to  be almost perfect for the middle to hit it. 

The team definitely looked messy at times; as travelor put it, at times they looked disorganized .  They will definitely need time for Gabby to connect well with all her hitters and also time for the defense to gel; for the players to get to know and trust each other.  One of the characteristics of a team that doesn't know/trust each other is that they aren't sure who should take a ball and sometimes nobody does.  Another characteristic is when players try to do too much and one player may try to take a ball that should be someone else's, creating confusion. I think we saw both over the weekend.

Looking up her total Aces, Errors, Aces/Set, (& sets played) I found:
2018 --> 13A 38E .14A/s (96 sets)
2019 --> 34A 54E .29A/s (117 sets)
2020-21 --> 13A 21E .23A.S/s (56 sets)

She seemed to be on an upward trajectory up until Covid hit.
I wonder how much the lack of reps in the Fall of 2020 and the limited sets played in 2021 affected her efficiency?
It's difficult to determine if her 2020-21 season average would have improved with more reps.

Currently, for Pitt, she has 4A 10E .33A/s (12 sets)
It'll be interesting to see how she does over the entire season for Pitt.

As for Holland, I really hope she can maintain that pace. 
The team will need to serve tough in order to be competitive this season.

After not so good a night serving v GT, Holland got into the groove in the last two matches. Don't have anything I can look to (because the play-by-play stuff I could see got truncated), there seemed to be several runs that Holland went on...which is a combo of her not making an SE and the strength of that rotation. Someone on this site used to compare rotation strengths...I wonder if it'll turn out that we're strong when Holland's on the service line. She showed some nice hitting versatility v UCF on the slide. More, please!

BTW, Serena when I last looked early in the weekend seemed to be having another really really good year. I feared that she might not get much floor time, as seems to happen with transfers. But she's playing most sets and putting up her usual block and K stats by the looks of it.

For anyone who didnt catch the game live. Enjoy.

Are you sure you want that game to be found?  Was a REALLY REALLY ugly game.

was very interested in seeing how the substitutions occurred, what the assignments were. Always easier when one knows the outcome.