When a team plays a tough grind-it-out match and has to pull out all the stops to secure victory, it finds out its makeup. Those are the matches that great teams find a way to win, matches that help teams dig down deep and make the plays when the pressure is on the line late in the season.
Not much time has passed since the fifth-ranked Florida Gators scrapped out one such victory — Monday’s thrilling 3-2 (25-19, 23-25, 25-20, 22-25, 17-15) victory over Florida State — but they will quickly see how much they have learned from that victory when they travel to Stockton, Calif., for the 31st Annual Community Bankers Classic.
The Gators (3-0) take on No. 11 Stanford (2-1) at 8 p.m. Friday to open the Classic. Stanford is coming off an opening weekend that included a 3-0 defeat at the hands of Notre Dame, a team Florida will host in its regular-season finale. Friday’s match is a rematch of the Round of 16 in last year’s NCAA Tournament, a match the Cardinal took in straight sets en route to reaching the NCAA Championship, where they lost in straight sets to Penn State.
The nightcap will feature San Jose State and Pacific following the first match. The losers will play in the consolation match at 8 p.m. Saturday, followed by the championship match at 10 p.m.
The quick turnaround should help the Gators come postseason time, when they will not have much time to prepare for opponents between matches.
“This is an opportunity to play teams from out of the league in back-to-back matches,” said Florida coach Mary Wise. “This will be similar to what you have to do in the NCAA tournament. We have very little turnaround on the second night and that’s a great challenge for our team. Again, we are looking at the long-term investment and this is an opportunity for us to get better by playing these teams.”
After Monday’s Florida State match, Wise didn’t understate the importance of the home crowd in helping the Gators pull out the tight win. She even went as far to say that Florida probably would not have won the match on the road or even on a neutral court.
The Gators will get a chance to prove that statement should only be attributed to early-season jitters and the intensity of a rivalry game on their first road trip of the season.
The players are looking forward to the challenge.
“This will be our first test on the road,” said senior Elyse Cusack. “So as long as we play hard and use what we did against Florida State on the road we’ll be fine. Florida State tested us early but it showed that we’re tough and that we can win big matches like that and I think it was a good experience for us.”
Cusack led the way Monday with 19 of her team’s 63 digs and leads the team with 41 in three games so far this season.
But while the team has done a good job on the backline defensively in digging up balls, Wise wants to see more production in blocking from the front line. That level of production may just determine how far the Gators go this season.
“There are two really key stats in women’s volleyball that determine success,” Wise said. “One is hitting efficiency and one is blocking balls. Over the years there have never been great teams that didn’t block.”
Cusack gets as good a look as anybody at how the front line has been blocking so far this season and doesn’t hesitate to commend her teammates.
“Playing defense behind the block, I think they do a great job,” Cusack said. “But, in order to be a top team, you have to block balls so that will be a focus coming up this week.”
That mentality of continuing to work on improving the blocking part of the game has infected middle blockers Kristina Johnson and Cassandra Anderson.
“We always work a lot on blocking,” Johnson said. “It’s a focus and a goal on our team. It’s important to get touches on balls so we can slow them down or block them.”
“Blocking is really important because it’s a really big part of our point scoring,” Anderson followed. “It helps our defense and it helps get everything started.”
Anderson is currently leading the team with 0.73 blocks per set, while Johnson is third at 0.55 per set. Both players are striving to get back to last season’s averages of 1.01 and 0.82 per set, respectively.
They still have plenty of time to get where they want to be. The Gators are also trying to compensate for the loss of senior Kelsey Bowers, who played an integral role in blocking for last year’s team, averaging 0.95 per set.
While Wise is still looking for improvements on the defensive side, she has to be impressed by the early signs of improvement from her young front line. It’s easy for Wise to see why those improvements are occurring.
“A lot of players make their biggest strides between their freshman and sophomore years,” Wise said. “They just become more physical, they hit the ball harder, they jump harder. And we’ve got players that are used to playing together and right now. Our passers are passing very well because they’ve had all these reps from the fall, the spring, and the summer. It’s all been cumulative.”
In particular, those players who have made the biggest jump are sophomores Colleen Ward and Kristy Jaeckel, both of whom have seen an early spike in their attacking numbers from last season.
Jaeckel is leading the way with 39 kills at 3.55 per set, while also attacking at a very efficient .390 percentage. Those numbers are up from last year’s 2.91 kills per game on a .238 percentage.
Ward has seen her numbers jump from 2.3 kills per set and a .207 attacking percentage last year to 3.36 and .271 this season.
The season is still young, but the early signs of improvement are signaling good things to come for the Gators.
They will get another glimpse this weekend in California, where they hope to show how far they’ve come, while also learning a few lessons to put under their belts as they continue getting better.
After all, this is still a very young team that still has lots of potential to improve. Considering they have already earned a reputation as a top-five team and taking into account their quick learning curve to this point, opponents will soon want nothing to do with these Gators.