The Lancers, 1-10 on the season after going 0-6 at the Wyoming Conference Pre-season tournament in Cheyenne last weekend, will host the No. 5-ranked Western Nebraska Community College volleyball team today at 7 p.m. The Cougars are 11-1 on the season after winning their second straight Salt Lake Invite over the weekend.EWC will then turn around and travel to Northeastern Junior College on Wednesday to face another ranked team in the No. 22 Plainswomen.
EWC coach Verl Petsch knows it will be a challenging two days facing his your team, but knows his team will show up hoping they can pull an Appalachian State-style win.
“You are right, anything can happen but we definitely have to be at the top of every skill of our game to pull an upset,” Petsch said. “It is possible and we will definitely give it everything we can and let the chips fall as they may. But, we just need to play tough.”
WNCC coach Chris Green said his team isn’t overlooking the Lancers. WNCC is 17-2 against Eastern Wyoming during Green’s eight years as coach.
“I don’t think our girls realize what Eastern Wyoming’s record is. We don’t talk to them about what is happening on the other side of the net,” he said. “We are just focused on our side of the net and trying to get better. We just work on what we need to improve on.”
Petsch said the Lancers main problem early on is consistency and it showed at the Wyoming Conference tournament, where the Lancer’s played the No. 7-ranked Casper College Thunderbirds tough on Friday before falling 31-29. In Saturday’s tournament action, the team also played tough falling in all three matches. They lost to to Sheridan College 30-17, 30-15, 30-10; and then in five games to Northwest College (30-14, 25-30, 30-24, 28-30, 15-7) and Laramie County Community College (30-13, 28-30, 21-30, 30-24, 15-10).
“We have done that all year where it seems that we play at a level of our competition, but just a little bit below them so to speak,” he said. “We just haven’t been able to chalk up some victories.”
One of the things the Lancers will need to solve is the team’s offense woes, along with consistency to topple WNCC.
“We are certainly struggling offensively, but our defense is fairly good,” he said. “Against teams like these top-ranked teams, it will be a challenge for us to get the offense going. But we are going to give it our best.”
Definitely the Lancers will show up for the team’s home-opener and WNCC needs to not look past their cross-border rivals.
“We have been a very sporadic team. We play we for two or three points and then we kind of take a break, and that break allows the team to run several points and in rally scoring, it is difficult to catch up,” Petsch said. “When we played Casper last weekend in the tournament, they beat us 31-29 and we played the best that we have played. And then against lesser teams, we just don’t play very well.”
In Saturday’s action even though the Lancers fell to Northwest and LCCC in five games, they did receive strong play. Tricia Dorshorst, a 5-foot-10 freshman from Overlin, Kan., stood out with 15 kills against Northwest and 16 points and 16 kills against LCCC. Josey Peterson, a freshman from Torrington, Wyo., finished the two matches with 28 and 33 digs each. Peterson also had 16 digs in the three-game loss to Sheridan
Also, Lora Hill paced the Lancers in setting with 18 assists against Northwest and 17 against LCCC in the team’s two-setter offense. Jackie Onigkeit led the team in blocking with nine against LCCC and eight against Norhwest, and Sara Gipfert had 11 points against Northwest.
The Cougars, though, will enter the contest on a roll after winning the Salt Lake tournament with an impressive four-game win against No. 4-ranked Salt Lake Community College 30-15, 27-30, 31-29, 30-23. In that contest, three Cougars finished with double-digit kills led by Jennifer Eichler with 14 followed by Aida Bauza with 12 and Fatima Balza with 11. Balza also had a season-high 11 blocks.
The Cougars are also led by sophomore Soriana Pacheco, who earned MVP honors at the Salt Lake tourney. Pacheco finished with 39 set assists, 13 points, five blocks and five aces in the title match.
“Offensively we probably one of the better teams that we have been,” Green said. “We still need to work on a couple areas, serving and passing. We usually are good in those areas, but we struggled this weekend in those areas.
“Even though we won the Salt Lake tournament, I really think the girls feel they can play better then what they did. We are going to focus on doing those two areas well.”
Petsch said his team will have their hands full, but isn’t counting his team out.
“They are on a nice run right now with that tournament championship. I think it will be a powerful game,” he said. “I know our kids will come to play and give 110 percent. We will just have to see what happens.”
No comments:
Post a Comment