Pac-12 | What we learned from Washington volleyball’s win against Cal

Lessons from Sampson and Cy Young propel Kaleigh Nelson and her teammates to a win over the Bears

• #6 Washington def. California 3-0 (25-23, 25-21, 25-20)
• next: #7 Stanford @ #6 Washington | October 20 | 4:30PM

For the past several months, Washington’s Kaleigh Nelson has thought about cutting her hair. Monday night, she told her stylist to let the scissors fly.

“I just wanted change,” Nelson said.

Washington's Kaleigh Nelson (6) and teammates cheer a point against California
-photo by Shutter Geeks Photography

When the Biblical Sampson’s hair was shorn, he famously lost his strength. So when Nelson started the first set of Wednesday’s match against California with a series of weak-hitting errors, one might have wondered if the woman with shorter locks had somehow misplaced her mojo. Nelson ended the very first rally by hitting the ball into the net. She ended the second rally with a net violation. With UW trailing 3-1, she was stuffed by Cal’s Michelle Neumayr.

“It was frustrating, making errors,” Nelson confessed.

With Cal leading 6-2, Nelson sailed a ball out-of-bounds. Her coach, Jim McLaughlin had seen enough, and called a timeout.

“I challenged her at that point,” said McLaughlin, “and I asked her, who is she? Is she this kid that can make a lot of errors? Or is she this kid that can stabilize and just hit shots?”

In practice this past week, McLaughlin talked a lot about consistency. Too often, he’d seen his hitters make errors or get blocked, and then resort to weaker, lower percentage attacks like tips or roll shots. His message: work through the inevitable momentum swings by focusing on the one or two shots you do best.

“I told them, if you’re gonna pitch in the major leagues, those guys have one or two pitches, and they throw ‘em. And they know the strike zone. And if you’re gonna win a Cy Young, you’re gonna know it even better. We talked about winning Cy Young Awards as hitters.”

The first point out of the timeout? A Nelson slam, straight down the right-side line. It was both a gift and a challenge from her setter, Jenni Nogueras.

“Gosh, I love that girl,” Nelson said. “Jenni was a stud. She’s a lot more vocal than she used to be. She gets on us, but that’s what teammates have to do.”

With the kill, Nelson rotated out, and the Huskies continued to struggle. At one point they trailed 12-6, as Cal’s hitters—and particularly opposite Christina Higgins—pounded the ball with abandon.

“(Higgins) can hit high and deep, she can put it down,” said Cal coach Rich Feller. “She’s pretty tough to defend.”

Nelson reentered the rotation with her team back within two, thanks to some timely hitting by teammate Krista Vansant. But Cal’s other big weapon, Adrienne Gehan, welcomed Nelson with a powerful slam for a point. On the next rally, however, Nelson answered with a smart kill off Gehan’s block attempt. Gehan accepted the challenge and delivered another kill, only to see Nelson pound cross-court from the right side, then a send a smart attack off high hands for yet another point. Three swings, three kills. And Nelson was back.

Hair or no hair.

“I wanted to stay consistent, keep going for my shot over and over again,” she said. “And not dwell on the fact that I started off not very strong. It’s all about finishing strong.”

And finish strong she did, tying with Vansant for 14 kills for the match. “She wasn’t herself,” said McLaughlin, “and then she became herself in a big way.”

But the biggest play was yet to come. With Washington trailing 21-20, Nelson hit a cross with power off the Cal block. Gehan again responded with a monster kill, and Vansant answered with a powerful shot of her own. Feller called a timeout with the score tied at 22. He wanted to make sure Higgins got a swing.

“The scouting report on Washington is the corners are open,” Feller said, “‘cause they play a bunched-in defense, everyone knows that. If you can hit it high over the block into the corner, you can probably get a score.”

With Vansant serving, Cal setter Joan Caloiaro delivered to Higgins on the right. But, for whatever reason—set too close to the net? block too imposing?—Higgins decided to tip, and the Huskies easily kept it in play. It wasn’t what Feller wanted.

“Nope, not at all,” he said. “With Washington’s defense, tips don’t generally fall. ‘Cause they’re so close in. Washington had zero blocks that first game. So my opinion would be, why not swing away at those, and see what happens?”

Instead, it was Nelson who had a chance to swing away, on a set from Nogueras, and she buried it down the line. After a Vansant service error, Nogueras trusted Nelson again, and—you guessed it—Nelson delivered. That made it 24-23, allowing Melanie Wade to complete the comeback with a service ace.

“We have some adversity? Respond to it,” McLaughlin said. “It’s the type of people we have, the type of team we have. That’s all it is. These kids can make some plays when it counts.”

“We’re working in practice on keeping the edge, staying competitive,” said Nelson. “A lot of that is staying aggressive: getting our feet to the ball, going after every swing, and not tipping. Making them earn the points, not giving them any extra points.”

And although Cal competed hard the rest of the match (“They’re the best team we’ve played so far,” said McLaughlin,) Washington refused to hand the Bears any gifts. After those first three errors at the top of the match, Nelson committed just one more the rest of the way. Vansant had 14 kills and just 1 error on 29 swings. As a team, the Huskies committed just two hitting errors in each of the final two sets, while the Bears had 12 errors over that span.

Jenna Orlandini had another stellar match for Washington, with 15 digs, some of them sensational. “She’s becoming a great player,” McLaughlin said, “In line with (former Washington All-American liberos) Tama Miyashiro and Candace Lee.” And the Huskies—who lead the 328 teams in Division 1 in aces/set—added 5 more aces, including 2 each from soft-serving Katy Beals and hard-serving Cassie Strickland.

Wiping her brow and readjusting her hair at the end of the match, Nelson was reminded of her unfamiliar coiffure. “It felt so weird to reach back and have, really, no ponytail.”

Turns out, she didn’t need it.

NOTES:

[10/17/13 | 3:45PM: corrects early version to note that Cal played Utah at home--not USC on the road--Sunday night]

• The Pac-12’s Wednesday night matches continue to draw scrutiny from many conference coaches. After Washington drew large crowds last weekend against Arizona and Arizona State, the announced attendance was only 1,525. “I don’t know how good that looks on TV when there aren’t a lot of people,” said Feller. Feller wasn’t dissing the UW faithful—he was reacting to a two-year pattern of poorly-attended matches whenever the Pac-12 Network schedules a mid-week game.
• Feller’s team had another reason to be concerned about the schedule: academics. The Bears played a night match in against Utah Sunday (a 3-1 loss to) then had classes and a film session Monday (“We couldn’t really practice Monday,” he said, “we were whipped.”) After a short day on Tuesday, the team flew to Seattle Tuesday afternoon. “I’m not sure how much trouble I could get in for saying something about that,” he said. “I will say that our team is going to miss double the number of classes this year than they have any year that I’ve been here. And that’s a hardship. It’s an extreme hardship on a student-athlete.”
• The Bears won’t return home until Sunday, because the schedule has them playing Saturday night in Pullman. It begs the question: couldn’t the conference have scheduled that match for Friday?
• Although the match was the only Pac-12 game of the evening, and although it was featured on the Pac-12 Networks, there were no broadcasters in Seattle. Instead, the play-by-play was called from a studio in San Francisco, as the announcers watched a video feed. 

---

Photos courtesy Shutter Geeks Photography

NCAA | Washington volleyball jumps to #3 in national media poll

AVCA poll elevates Penn State #1 and Cinderella team San Diego #2

Pac-12 | What we learned from Washington’s win at California

#5 Washington 3, California 2 (25-22, 22-25, 16-25, 28-26, 17-15)

next: #5 Washington @ #1 Stanford | November 8 | 8PM | Pac-12 Network

How did California beat Washington?

It was late in the final set. Washington and California were tied, with each team exchanging side-outs. Sometimes points were earned by strong attacks; others were given up on errors.

Suddenly, almost quietly, Cal strung together two in a row, and the match ended.

While that was the script last night in Seattle, it was also the exact same scenario last month in Berkeley. And last season in Seattle. And two seasons ago in Seattle.

The Golden Bears have now defeated the Huskies six times in a row, spanning 2-1/2 seasons. And almost every time, there’s just a whisker of difference, always in Cal’s favor.

“We seem to match up really well,” said Cal Coach Rich Feller after his team escaped with another 3-1 victory (25-21, 25-23, 22-25, 25-23). “Right now, our team obviously has some confidence in playing the Huskies.”

“I thought Cal played well,” counted Washington Coach Jim McLaughlin, as he lamented his team’s inability to close out tight sets against the Bears. “It’s a maturity thing. It gets real tough in the later stages of the set. It takes a lot of fortitude, you gotta have composure. It’s hard. We’re learning how to deliver at the end of sets. But we’re not good enough yet.”

Washington's Kelly Holford (3), Summer Ross (99) and Gabbi Parker (11) celebrate a kill by Bianca Rowland (15)
[Volleyblog Seattle photo by Leslie Hamann]

It was Senior Night at Hec Ed Pavilion, and both coaches lauded the career—and recent resurgence—of Washington senior Bianca Rowland. Saturday night, Rowland had 12 kills and 2 errors on 23 attacks (.435) Over the past six matches (Arizona State, Arizona, UCLA, USC, Stanford & Cal), Rowland has a combined 60 kills and just 5 errors on 122 attacks (.451). Considering the competition (the past four opponents are all ranked in the top five nationally), it would be fair to say no one in Division 1 is playing better right now than Rowland.

“She’s good all the time now,” said McLaughlin. “She’s just that good. We gotta go to her a little more, to be honest with you.”

“What a great player,” said Feller. “I won’t miss her as a competitor. I will miss seeing her display her skills. She’s fabulous.”

But the Golden Bears have plenty of good players on their side, which helps answer the question: How did California beat Washington?

WASHINGTON COULD NOT STOP CALIFORNIA’S SLIDE ATTACK

California's Elly Barrett (10) sets a slide to Kat Brown (11)
[Volleyblog Seattle photo by Leslie Hamann]

A slide play is when a hitter—most often, but not always, the middle—runs toward the pin (antenna) and takes a fairly flat set to hit a sharply-angled attack, often off the block.

“They’re in love with the slide. They run it to death,” said McLaughlin. “They got away from us on the slide, for sure.”

Cal’s Shannon Hawari had 12 kills (.556), mostly off the slide. Correy Johnson, Cal’s right side hitter, added 11 kills (.409), most from way outside the pins.

“Correy’s pretty magical sometimes,” Feller said. ”She’s just so rangey, and she’s got all the shots. She’s got a pretty fast arm that I think people underestimate.”

Although other teams have had success against the Huskies with a slide, McLaughlin is confident his system is designed to handle it.

“You gotta do it by committee; you gotta have people in the right spot blocking,” he said, “and then you gotta have people in the right spots defensively. Middles have to take big steps. And we were drifting, and we can’t drift.”

WASHINGTON COMMITTED TOO MANY HITTING ERRORS

On the night, Washington hit an anemic .135, thanks largely to committing 29 attack errors.

“We were just not getting a good beat,” said McLaughlin. “We were early on our transition hits. We’re not on a first step going to the ball, and we’re running underneath the ball and we’re launching it.”

Running under the ball was a particular problem at crucial times for both Krista Vansant and Kylin Muñoz. Vansant had 10 hitting errors to go with her 13 kills (.061); Muñoz added another 6 errors with her 11 kills (.126) During big rallies at the ends of sets one and four, Muñoz and Cal’s Tarah Murrey were their respective teams’ go-to hitters; Murrey—an All-American senior—far outplayed Muñoz, who sent the match’s final attack sailing out of bounds when she aimed too high for the Cal blockers’ hands.

“Tarah Murrey was good when she had to be,” said McLaughlin.

Besides Rowland, the other bright spot for the Huskies’ attack was Summer Ross. Last month in Berkeley, Ross had 14 kills on just one error; Saturday she added six kills on just one error. McLaughlin was impressed.

“I challenged her a little bit after last night (a win against Stanford) and said, ‘Look, you can pass, you can block, you can serve. But you can hit, too.’ And she’s got a good arm. She did a better job tonight. She’s just gotta go after it a little more.”

THE TWO-SETTER OFFENSE WORKS … EXCEPT WHEN IT DOESN’T

After a rough start, McLaughlin’s mid-season installation of a 6/2 (two-setter) offense seems to be working, especially lighting offensive fires under Rowland and sophomore outside hitter Gabbi Parker.

Kelly Holford digs as Krista Vansant (16)
looks on
[Volleyblog Seattle photo by Leslie Hamann]

But teams are allowed only 12 substitutions per set, and a 6/2 burns through substitutions quickly. That, in the end, may have cost the Huskies the fourth set. Unhappy with the play of Parker, libero Jenna Orlandini, middle blocker Lauren Barfield (“they were not meeting their standards”), McLaughlin used extra substitutions to bring in Kaleigh Nelson, Kelly Holford and Kelcey Dunaway. Toward the end of the set, Washington had no more substitutions, McLaughlin was forced to use just two hitters in the front row.

“We ran out of subs in the fourth set,” said McLaughlin. “I think if we don’t run out of subs, we win that set.”

That said, #11 Washington has finally completed a killer four-match march against the nation’s elite: #1 UCLA, #4 USC, #3 Stanford and #5 Cal. They were rarely out of any set, and rallied dramatically for a victory over Stanford. With the team’s final four conference matches against teams toward the bottom of the standings—Utah, Colorado and Washington State (twice)—McLaughlin hopes the lessons learned from playing great teams will allow his team to make another deep run in the tournament.

“I liked our fight. We have some fight in us. Our backs are against the ball and we respond.”

How did California beat Washington?

“It might be the first time we lost a match when we won the serve/serve receive battle.” –Washington Coach Jim McLaughlin.

BERKELEY, CA— Haas Pavilion was sweltering. It was the second set, the score tied at 18, Cal leading one set to none. The ensuing rally seemed to last an eternity: sets were less than sharp, attacks were strong but digable. Time and again, someone made a near-impossible save and play continued. Tips fooled no one; roll shots didn’t drop; the ball seemed as if it would never hit the hardwood. Finally, after another how’d-she-do-that save, Summer Ross’ dig gave setter Jenni Nogueras enough options, and Krista Vansant finally found the floor.

Cal’s 3-1 victory over visiting Washington was not a thing of beauty. It was an odd, emotional and ultimately exhausting slugfest between two of the best teams in the nation. And it started with an unexpected twist that may someday be viewed as either brilliant or badly designed.

The twist had its roots five days earlier, when Washington Coach Jim McLaughlin studied stat sheets and film the Sunday after routine sweeps of Colorado and Utah. All season, his starting setter, Evan Sanders, had struggled to consistently connect with fellow senior All-American middle blocker Bianca Rowland. Redshirt sophomore setter Nogueras displayed better timing with Rowland, even if she was less in synch with some of her other teammates.

Washington Coach Jim McLaughlin sorting out
an out-of-rotation call
[Volleyblog Seattle photo by Leslie Hamann]

So McLaughlin had an idea: why not use both setters, with Nogueras paired primarily with Rowland, and Sanders with senior middle Lauren Barfield? The system has a name, a 6-2 (six hitters, two setters), and is in use in a significant minority of college and high school programs.

“I think it’s a good format for them (the Huskies),” McLaughlin said. “I thought of it Sunday, and we put it into effect, maybe Tuesday, Wednesday.”

In his eleventh season at Washington, it was the first time McLaughlin had ever used a two-setter system in a conference match. And his switcheroo surprised Cal coach Rich Feller.

“Yes, it did,” said Feller. “It was good. It was a great tactic by him.”

Time will tell. On three occasions, the Huskies were called for being out of rotation on serve receive, a common error when learning a new system. Kelcey Dunaway, one of Washington’ six hitters, got only three sets. And the Huskies’ two left-side hitters, junior Kylin Muñoz (.037) and freshman Krista Vansant (-.026) both had their worst matches of the season. Vansant struggled so mightily that she was pulled for the first time this year—at the end of the third set and most of the fourth set—for sophomore Gabbi Parker.

“Krista’s gotta learn,” said McLaughlin, “and sometimes you’ve gotta learn the hard way. Hitting down into the block just can’t happen. It can happen in high school, but it just can’t happen at a high level against a team that knows how to block.”

But the 6-2 offense also had a considerable upside. Bianca Rowland had 11 kills and just 1 error on 25 swings (.400). And freshman Summer Ross had her best match of the season: 14 kills, 1 error on 39 attempts, the most on the team.

“I told the team, I was proud of her (Summer), said McLaughlin. “She dug well and passed well, hit well, she did everything. I was really proud of her composure, her competitiveness. You know, they’ve written a lot of stuff about her, but she’s starting to earn it a little bit. It’s just different at this level, but she’s showing she can be a player at this level.”

But in the end, Cal earned its fourth straight victory over Washington, stretching back to last season. How did they do it?

THE BEARS DUG DEEP

Cal had 94 digs for the match; a big number. Some of that was due to poor hitting choices by the Huskies (see next section), but most was Cal’s never-say-die approach to defense. The Bears had good eyework, getting arms, hands and fists under the ball, then chasing several balls all the way to the stands to keep rallies alive. Libero Robin Rostratter had 26 digs; her UW counterpart, Jenna Orlandini, had another steady match with 20 digs.

The Huskies had 71 digs; they may have missed the presence of defensive specialist, who was the odd-player-out in the six-hitter system.

“Cal played awfully well,” said McLaughlin, “they played better than anything we’ve seen on film.”

THE HUSKIES DIDN’T MAKE CAL PAY

As they have all season, the Huskies served tough.

“That’s the best serving team we’ve seen,” said Feller.

Although Cal was forced out of system time and again (resulting in several sloppy-looking sets by Cal’s Elly Barrett), the Huskies all-too-frequently couldn’t convert the opportunity. In some cases, Sanders and Nogueras passed up opportunities for quick sets or back sets that might have gone for quick kills. In other cases, Vansant and Kylin Muñoz missed chances to tool the blockers or hit line, sending far too many attacks straight to Rostratter.

Cal’s serving, by contrast, was nothing spectacular, but once again, the Huskies had too few “first time” kills.

“It might be the first time we lost a match when we won the serve/serve receive battle,” said McLaughlin.

SLIP AND SLIDE

Washington has often struggled when the opposing middle blocker pulls behind the setter for a right-side slide. When Cal needed a run, they often ran their middles, to great effect.

“That’s their identity; they like to run the slide,” said McLaughlin. “And they had some success on us. But we’ll get better at that, it’s just exposure. You’re in a tight match against a good opponent, little things like that can make the difference.”

A BIG-TIME PLAYER STEPPED UP

All-American Tarah Murrey was all but invisible the first two sets. For the match, she hit just .132, taking 68 swings. But like all great athletes, she took over when the match was on the line. With the Huskies trailing 20-22 in the fourth set, a Cal For the match, she hit just .132, but Murrey took 68 swings. service error and three Summer Ross kills pulled UW even at 22, then 23, then 24, then 25. During most of Pac-12 play so far this season, the Huskies have come back time and again at the end of sets, and they seemed poised to do it again.

Cal's Tarah Murrey, off balance, attacks against Washington's Lauren Barfield (8) and Kelcey Dunaway (2)
[Volleyblog Seattle photo by Leslie Hamann]

But Murrey was on the other side of the net, and two of her kills were big-time: an out-of-system bomb that most players would have sent across as a free ball, and a back row attack that ultimately made the difference in the set and the match. Murrey would not be denied.

Both Summer Ross and Krista Vansant have all the tools be similarly big time. And McLaughlin thinks matches like this one can play a part. “We’re still growing, and we’re learning that, if we don’t do things right, there’s consequences. And that’s a good lesson.”

And, in the moments after the match, before Washington fans had time to weigh in about the wisdom of a 15-1 team—ranked second in the nation—changing its offense as it faced a fellow national power on a hostile court, McLaughlin was not backing down from his previous Sunday’s inspiration.

“This team has a chance, if we can learn, learn from our mistakes. And just kind of get into that and grind and accept it and get fired up about making some changes to get better.”