Quote from BSUBass77 on September 26, 2023, 1:48 pm

After a shaky out of conference season, the Volleyball team made some progress over the last two weeks.  Just before they started the conference season, they played LMU (Loyola Marymount University) which was a loss in three sets.  However, they were close in all three sets against a good team.  Then they won South Dakota State and Montana each in four sets or less.  It was a nice way to end the non-conference schedule.

Next came Colorado State, which had a new set of coaches.  BSU won the first set by a good margin, then lost the second set by four (they led most of the set).  Then BSU regrouped and won the third set by 10, but lost the fourth set amidst a rally by CSU.  Now we were down to a five set match, which we haven't done that well in over the last month. This set only goes to 15 versus 25 for the earlier sets. As I expected we started out slow got behind by five, but then we really put it on our start hitter's back and Paige Bartsch came up big and BSU won.

The next game was with Wyo, who came in with only one loss in the non-conference.  On this match, BSU came in hot at the beginning. Paige was on fire and BSU went up two sets to zero.  But the third set, the Cow-women came back and dominated.  Here we go again I was thinking.  But to my surprise, BSU really dug deep and dominated the fourth set.

I was able to confirm that junior outside hitter, Jordan Miller has a partial ACL tear.  She has outside hopes of playing in November.  Also, RS Qairo Bentley is out with an ACL tear that she suffered on the first set of the year.  She won't be back this year.

Filling in rather nicely for these two, is F Anabel Kotzakov.  She is second on the team in kill attempts and is becoming more consistent in her hits.  I still think Kaminski is under used. She had .318 percentage with is very good.  Chey Day could be set more since she has nearly .300 hitting percentage.

From my observations, the defense is a little better than it was last year.  Breanna Mitchell and Bella McGirr have taken on the task of defensive specialists.  I like their effort in a very tough position.

Next test will be Air Force (go Army) and New Mexico.  Last year, when the team was really struggling, BSU was demolished by Air Force in three sets.  This wasn't even close so we will have to see if this team has put all that behind them.  Hold on for what might be a wild ride.