I wish I could have posted Saturday night, but I was exhausted, and we had a somewhat early start on Sunday, so I proceeded to just crash and get some much-needed rest. (Note: I ended up writing the majority of this yesterday, but ended up having to actually do schoolwork, so I wrapped it up tonight. Sorry for the delay!)
Honestly? I could probably rattle off 10-20 pages about this weekend. However, I won't torture everyone reading and try and break it up piece by piece. Let's start with the results:
There was a lot of excitement going into this tournament. 32 teams, 6 of them being from our conference, one with 3 of our alum, and other random people I knew here and there (A friend from Chicago was actually playing for Cornell - I had no idea he went there! Was crazy to see him). The starters did some reps on Friday, but honestly, that was the only time we had played together during the 4 weeks of preseason.
First match Saturday was against Syracuse. The former setter from Sacred Heart was still there, which I was pleased about because I definitely wanted to settle the score from my freshman year. Syracuse is a big team, but the mechanics are iffy and overall their intensity is lacking. On the opposite end of the spectrum, our team played a pretty complete first game, and despite a couple missed serves beat them 25-15. The second game we were a bit sloppy, trailing 18-13 at one point, but started chipping away and picked up some big defensive stops. We won the game 25-23, with our opposite Josh picking up HUGE roofs on the setter (who now hits outside) both for the first and last points of the match.
The second/third matches were against Georgetown and Bryant (a college from Rhode Island). Although Bryant did manage to steal a game from a sleeping Syracuse, both teams were pretty raw. This allowed us to get everyone some playing time, and everyone really pulled their weight when they were in the game. We won all of these games pretty convincingly, and I even got to set for a couple rotations to let our setter Matt blast away at some attacks! He's got an unreal shoulder, was a blast getting to run the offense a bit.
So we ended the day 6-0, the point differential probably being around +50. After watching film, I had a MUCH lighter load than at Springfield, posting a 9-3-18 hitting line. I had 4-5 aces, matched with about 6-7 errors. DOH! Definitely a streak server, hopefully with repetition I'll knock it off. Matt did a great job distributing the ball evenly, and I feel that it allowed the hitters to keep their arms/legs fresh for day 2.
Day 2: We had a 10 AM match against Central Connecticut to get into the Gold (top 8 teams) tournament, one game, 30 points. They had a decent setter (although we definitely utilized our size mismatch on him on the outside), as well as one or two bangers on the outside. We started this game a bit sloppy, missing quite a few serves, letting balls hit the ground, and being a bit less crisp on serve receive. However, at about the 15 point mark we finally started hitting our stride, putting up a few nice blocks. On top of that, Mark (middle) and Matt (setter) REALLY started gunning their serves, throwing CCSU out of their offense, giving us downballs, and allowing us to make them pay for it. An end result of 30-20, and we're off to the Gold bracket!
Our first match is against Rivier's 2nd team. Unfortunately, Rivier 1 (who still looks very strong) came out flat against Emmanuel in their challenge match, and ended up losing 30-26. A couple thoughts on that: Both teams are in the NECVA with us, and I suspect that Rivier will come out on FIRE when they meet again. Apparently the players didn't know that a loss would send them to the silver bracket. Also, Emmanuel is a VERY big "peaks-and-valleys" team, and although Rivier helped them with about 7 missed serves and probably another 7-10 hitting errors, Emmanuel did what they had to to win the match. Rivier picked up some very strong recruits, and I believe we'll be battling them for the top of our region this season. Looking forward to it, although I was disappointed that a Rivier/Newbury Final was out of the question.
Although Rivier is very deep this year, their second team didn't have the experience we did, and We came out hot from the get-go. Although they made a brief push towards the end of the second game, we pretty much controlled the tempo from the first point to the last, taking a 25-14 25-20 win (first score may be off a few).
This led to a semi-final match against Boston College. I was excited for this one, as they had beaten my squad at the Springfield Tournament. However, with Mark/James/Josh back in the line-up, I knew it would be a completely different story.
We actually came out pretty flat in the first match, I beleive at one point we were down 15-10. However, as usual we kept chipping away, and after some aggressive serving I started hitting my stride hitting both the bic and hut, and with the help of some phenominal defense, setting, and draws from the middle, I put down points 22, 23, and 25 to complete a 25-23 victory. We kept at it in game 2, posting a 25-20 victory that sent us to the finals!
This led to a showdown with Lost Boys, which featured a mixture of Rivier/Newbury Alum. What a match! I watch film to break down/analyze things, but I replayed this one and just enjoyed the rallies. Defense was phenominal, hits were big, strong serving, it was truly what finals should be made of. With some stellar play by everyone, we managed to win the match 25-23 25-21, finishing as the champion, winning all 13 of our sets during the two days.
Part 2 will be posted tomorrow!
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