VB - Perspective On The Loss To SMU

[vantheman1976]

Well....it happened....Pitt lost a match.....and to an SMU team that they effectively destroyed just 3 days earlier

• The explanation is pretty simple....we made 45 errors (about 4 more/set than expected) and scored only 75 points (nearly 3 pts/set less than expected)
• It all came crashing down in set 4.....when it appeared we were on a glide path to another win after soundly winning set 3 by a 25 - 13 margin
• SMU won set 4 because Pitt had 10 errors....SMU only scored 15 points in set 4.
• Look at it this way.....Pitt on average gives back about 6 pts/set due to errors....not 10 pts/set like today
• We lost set 4 by a score of 25 - 23. Just 2 less errors....8 instead of 10....and we win....match over
• Or looked at another way....Babcock and Stafford were held to a combined 2 points/set under their average for the match....also enough to win that crucial 4th set.

SMU gets credit for a great game plan and coming back after being whacked in set 3. In set 5.....SMU was a hitting machine....11 points to Pitt's 6. Errors were essentially even....Pitt committed 4....SMU 3. We now return home for 4 straight home matches....2 of which are Louisville and Stanford. Fisher and his staff will be ready. This will be a learning experience.....and it will be a valuable one.

PS.....big shout out to the 6 - 0 Pitt Panther football team!

 

[mike412]

I switched back and forth between the FB game and this game in the last two sets, where there was overlap, but it appeared to me that it was a combination of better play than on Wednesday from SMU and many more errors by Pitt that caused the loss.

I give a lot of credit to the SMU coach for having her team ready to play.

It would have been unreasonable to expect Babcock to have another match like she had on Wednesday with 18 kills and 12 aces. And, she didn’t. But, I think what killed the team was slow starts, particularly in sets 4 and 5.

Even on Wednesday, they got off to slow starts in all three sets, trailing in everyone. But, never by the margins they trailed by in sets 4 and 5. They simply never came back from the slow starts in the final two sets. The deciding fifth set was never really a contest. There wasn’t a moment after we initially got behind 4 or 5 to 1 when I thought Pitt could come back.

Errors were a big part of the problem, and I wonder how much of that was due to tactical changes made by SMU. On Wednesday night, Babcock and Stafford made a lot of kills right into the middle of the court where there was no defender. That didn’t happen yesterday. Also, Stafford had a few kills off the hands of SMU blockers. Yesterday their hands got out of the way and those were errors. I don’t know if that was coaching or better concentration.

I thought SMU blocked much better than they did on Wednesday, and we should have expected that. They had more blocks per set than we did going into these two matches.

Did Kelley have a kill in the final two sets? I don’t remember one. I thought she was very ineffective and would liked to have seen more of Jones.

We truly didn’t look like the same team in Sets 4 and 5 last night. After the easy win in Set 3, I was hoping we would get off to a hot start in Set 4 and put the match away. Instead, they had the hot start, and, although we had two or three mini-rallies to get closer, they always were in control. Set 5 was never in doubt. They got a hot start and in a set only up to 15, it was effectively over.