Ugh. Something's been going around campus, and I believe it's finally caught up to me. I find myself tired all the time... even though I'm going to bed earlier and waking up later. Trying to Emergen-C it away, but so far no luck.
On a positive note, we beat MIT for the first time in four years Tuesday, and I had a decent box score of 18 kills on .304 hitting, 13 digs, 4 assists, 2 blocks, and 2 aces. The last two games were brutal, I believe the scores were 30-18 30-20. However, we gave them the first game of the match, so it took us four sets to put them away.
We're 8-1 on the season, losing a nailbiter 15-13 in the fifth to Ramapo early on in the season that could have gone either way. Other than that, we've been pretty convincing in our wins. When things click, this team has something special going for it. However...
It seems like lately we've been turning it on and off at will. I don't believe that it's intentional, but I do feel like our focus going into games is a bit shaky. Our warmups look sloppy, and our killer instinct is a far cry from our energy at BU. We played some AWFUL teams then, but never used that as an excuse to play down.
The scary thing is, we always seem to turn it around and punish the teams... to the point where I can't even pinpoint how we drop games to these teams. I think the big difference is how we treat each other on the court. Last year, we were clique-ish, and when someone made a mistake, certain people would get aggravated with them. With this team? Everyone works hard for the most part. Everyone gets along. When someone makes a mistake, everyone tries to pick them up. No grudges are held overall. But when we come out flat, we seem to get more frustrated with ourselves individually, which affects our energy on the court. Once we get the energy back though... it's unbelievable how well we play sometimes. I feel like if we consistently brought that to the table, we'd be a front-runner for the National Championship.
Eventually, a team is going to make us pay if we come out flat, continually pushing us back and not relinquishing their leads. How do you keep everyone up from the first point to the last? We still haven't quite figured it out. I hope we do it on our own rather than learning the hard way, with some tough matches coming up in the next few weeks with New Haven, New Paltz, Harvard, Rivier, Elms, and Endicott.
The sky's the limit, but we need to continually push forward. I'm a bit concerned short-term with how we come out of the gate, but things WILL pick up. Individually, I've had a nice 3-match stretch, compiling 53 kills, 33 digs, 8 aces, and 6 blocks in 11 games. I feel like I've been cutting down on my errors, simply making smarter decisions, and not forcing shots when the set isn't there. Amazing what happens when you play smart, who would have thought?
Anyways, going to take a power nap, head to dinner, and then we're off to Wentworth. They've taken a game from MIT, and they have an outside putting up monster numbers, so we can't take them lightly. However, if we play our game we should be 9-1 heading into our tournament this weekend. Time will tell. Wish us luck!
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