Just read through the volleytalk game thread... a lot of talk but most were small random thoughts like if someone was making a quick comment sitting on the sofa next to you. Mostly gopher fans but that's expected.

Things I learned:
- A lot of Stowers love; some angst why she wasn't playing 6 rotations (though she eventually did and did well!)
- everyone knows Lednicky is stud. Clearly the best player on the court.
- lots of comments questioning Morrison's decision on who is playing what. I think this is one of his strengths. He doesn't coach like a lot of coaches. Even in this big game, he is giving players a chance in critical moments. One comment was why Cos wasn't serving as she was a beast in U23. I think down the line, yeah she'll serve all the time, but coach was giving players quality play time for the betterment of the team.
- apparently there are volleyball fantasy leagues?
- universal hate on the female commentator especially mixing up our middles the entire game

I forgot we play Rice and Central Arkansas before our Utah swing. Rice I haven't seen what they have this year but Central Arkansas should be an opportunity to get some playing time for other to showcase what they can do depending on what the staff is wanting for our reserves

The only issue I have when looking over the box score this morning was the lack of service pressure compared to what it should be IMO. I am hoping that is a one off situation. Lednicky's serve has improved as it needs to be to play at an international level with so few of subs per set but she missed four last night. Also missed four against Baylor. While a better serve has to be more consistent Stowers looked terminal at times like Logan but in the end hit .000 while Hellmuth was getting the same .000 after like the first two sets but managed to minimize errors in the third and fourth set.

Watching Stowers hit I am sure this will be a much better stat line in the future. I will take her hitting efficiency from the Baylor game even if she only played one set

When we fire on all cylinders we should be an Elite 8 team or better depending on the draw but that is a long way away

But we better be prepared for Mizzou and Vandy out of the gate of the SEC as Vandy is no slouch taking Kansas to five who took the defending champ to five right before our match.

I thought Stowers played a little timid at the beginning and then got comfortable and cranked it up. Hopefully it was just jitters from not playing a competitive match in a long while.

On the Emily side, it also took her a while to get her feet under her. I hope she can find the confidence to crank it early and be dominant through the entire match.

My wife was not too happy with the TV announcer continuously confusing Cos and Perkins.. I'm glad others noticed as well.

It's called a Q Collar, it's something athletes will wear when they've hard a history of concussions. I found this on an article,

According to the FDA, the Q-Collar compresses against the jugular veins in the athlete's neck, increasing the volume of blood in their skull's blood vessels. The increased blood volume then "creates a tighter fit of the brain inside the skull." That tighter fit can then reduce the "slosh" movement.

With just one game in the books, I'm not going to make judgement on our OHs especially when both figured it out well before the end of the game and looked dominant. The quality of hits those two had has to be envied by most other teams.

The sets were all over the place the first 2 sets, hittable but not consistent placement. This caused some issues later including some horrible sets. But I'm not going to judge Waak on that either because the passing was atrocious. Haven't seen a setter run around as much as she did in a long while. But she held together and had some amazing sets as well including one to Stowers as well as one to Lednicky that surprised the blockers as Lednicky went up to hit with zero blockers on her. Unfortunately, Lednicky squibbed her hit, her worst hit all night. haha

We have to get better in pass quality and I think we did get better. I didn't pay too much attention to the back row but it seems quite a few players got time back there. Humphries started back there. Several "unknown" faces popped up there from time to time. Stowers played 6 rotations after a bit and did really well.

I think the coach is still figuring out some stuff on defense and wasn't afraid to experiment even against the #11 team. Good thing the Gophers had there own problems to figure out.

Overall I was really happy with the match. Stowers didn't have her best night, but she still put in some good serves and had a really good night, leading the team with 4 digs. I feel like we really only need 3 of our 4 strong offensive options going on most nights (between Logan, Emily, Kyndal, and I lump the middles together because of lower attack volume) against good teams or decent teams playing really well. We will need to get all of them going if we want to reach out ceiling though. I would like to see our blocking improve slightly (I know we did well, but I think we have more room to grow in getting positive block touches), and I'd like to see more out of our tip coverage. We did a decent job getting them up last night, but I'd like to get better at reading when hitters are going to tip so we can be ready to dime it. The other thing to keep in mind is that Minnesota was missing one of their starting OH's last night.

I'm super hyped for this season, especially with a massive win over a respected team. Can't wait to see where the season takes us!

When we were no ones, I enjoyed rooting for underdogs to beat the top dogs. Now that we are a top dog (closer anyway), I'm enjoying our new friends up here and not wanting underdogs to upset our friendship circle.