The season may still be young, but the fourth-ranked Florida Gators have already proven to be a very resilient bunch, staring down a match point for the second consecutive match.
With No. 11 Stanford taking a 24-21 lead in the fourth set, Florida (5-0) rallied to win the set and eventually the match just four days after beating instate rival Florida State in five sets.
Coach Mary Wise is happy with her team’s undefeated start to the young season, but she wouldn’t mind her team taking the easy road to victory every once in a while.
“From a coaching standpoint, I’ll take the 3-0 win and get out,” Wise said. “It would be a lot easier.”
But those tense moments are the ones that bring teams closer together and raise the confidence level to a point where they believe anything is possible. They are the kind of moments when you start to see your young team grow before your eyes.
“For this team to do it on the road, on a neutral court without that (home-crowd) help,” Wise said, “I think is really a growing-up moment.”
The Gators showed their increased maturity the following night by handling business in more dominating fashion, beating Pacific 3-1 (25-14, 20-25, 25-19, 25-21) to win the 31st annual Community Bankers Classic in Stockton, Calif.
Wise’s Gators head to Tampa this weekend to take on South Florida (5-0) at 8 p.m. Friday, followed by No. 3 Washington (6-0) at 6 p.m. Saturday in the Tampa Twice Tournament.
While Wise would be ecstatic to see her team remain unbeaten, she knows that a perfect record on paper means nothing as the season goes on if her team still has a few flaws that can be exploited.
“The record is nice, but it’s no indication of where this team can go,” Wise said. “We can get better in our transition defense to offense. The middle hitter-setter timing is still a work in progress. We’re three weeks in since we started training camp and I feel that although we’ve made improvements, there’s still a lot more room to go.”
Her ultimate goal is to work out all those kinks in her team’s well-oiled machine in the last matches before the Gators open their conference schedule the following weekend at Ole Miss and Arkansas.
“It’s not so much about the record but if we’re a better team come next Monday going into the SEC season,” Wise said. “We look at this as two more opportunities for us.”
Right off the bat, the Gators may be walking into a hostile crowd that desires nothing more than to see them fall flat on their face against the hometown Bulls. But that hostility will come at a perfect time for the Gators as they will immediately turn around to start SEC play on the road.
“As a home team I’m sure they will have all sorts of fans,” Wise said. “They may not be volleyball fans, but they will show up for a chance to cheer against the Gators. They are putting all of their work into marketing the Florida match and highlighting that. We will have our work cut out for us.”
The Gators will also have to be careful not to overlook the Bulls with a top-five team awaiting them the following night.
“It would be really easy for our fans to get caught up in the second match against Washington,” Wise said. “But we won’t be spending much time on Washington until we figure out a South Florida team that is blocking twice as many balls as we are. They are a significantly better blocking team than us, as is Washington. That’s an area of huge concern for us. We’re not going to beat teams as good as South Florida and Washington if we don’t start blocking balls.”
The Gators have been outblocked 80-50 so far this season and will be tested right away by one of the more powerful attackers in the country.
The Bulls come into the match boasting the Big East Preseason Player of the Year in Marcela Gurgel, who led the conference in kills and service aces last year. She already has 63 kills for a 3.71 per set average to go along with 11 aces this year.
After taking on Gurgel and the Bulls, the Gators will immediately turn around to take on a Huskies team that has yet to surrender a set this season. The Huskies feature a more balanced attack, similar to the Gators, with three players — Becky Perry (3.25 kills per set), Jill Collymore (3.22) and Kindra Carlson (2.93) — poised to put points on the board.
Florida is playing in its second straight tournament that involves playing matches on consecutive nights. The quick turnaround will help the Gators when conference play rolls around because SEC matches are usually played on Fridays and Sundays. Wise feels those are the types of schedules that favor teams that are more talented, especially teams that are used to playing with less preparation as Wise’s Gators will be.
Wise’s Gators will also be a battle-tested team when it comes time to take on their conference foes. After this weekend, there could be two more hard-fought matches to add to their growing list of close escapes.
But all that will do is give the Gators plenty of memories to look back on when they need to dig down deep to pull down a victory against a gritty opponent.
“I think this is something that we really can go back to come conference play,” Wise said. “We are going to be in some really tough matches and down. We’ve been there. We’ve done it. We can go back to that experience.”
And so far for the Gators each of those experiences can be used as a blueprint to pulling out that hard-fought victory.
THE BISON/AMERICAN VOLLEYBALL COACHES ASSOCIATION DIVISION I COACHES POLL
As of Sept. 7, 2009. First number in parentheses is last week’s ranking; second number in parentheses is first-place votes.
1 (1). Penn State (52 first-place votes) 6-0, 1491 points.
2 (2). Texas (7) 5-0, 1444
3 (3). Washington (1) 6-0, 1385
4 (5). Florida 5-0, 1277
5 (6). Nebraska 5-1, 1209
6 (4). Hawaii 4-2, 1188
7 (7). Michigan 4-0, 1173
8 (9). UCLA 5-1, 1052
9 (13). Minnesota 5-1, 1007
10 (11). Stanford 3-2, 932
11 (12). Iowa State 5-1, 835
12 (14). Oregon 5-0, 817
13 (10). California 3-3, 759
14 (8). Illinois 3-1, 744
15 (16). Southern California 5-1, 685
16 (19). St. Louis 3-3, 595
17 (18). Kentucky 6-0, 529
18 (20). Michigan State 6-0, 412
19 (21). Pepperdine 5-1, 340
20 (22). Cal-Irvine 6-0, 308
21 (23). Kansas State 4-2, 233
22 (NR). Florida State 5-1, 190
23 (25). Wichita State 5-1, 175
24 (15). San Diego 1-3, 114
25 (NR). Arizona 6-0, 89
Others receiving votes: Utah 75, Louisiana State 63, Long Beach State 55, Baylor 43, Dayton 43, Texas A&M 31, UC Santa Barbara 28, Tennessee 24, Duke 23, Purdue 23, Notre Dame 18, Santa Clara 16, Rice 13, Ohio 12, Northern Iowa 10, Pittsburgh 8, Oklahoma 7, Washington State 6.