The last time the Maverick Rambler checked in with this year's UT Arlington volleyball squad, I wondered how good the team was with their 6-0 record. Losses to Central Arkansas and Tulsa kind of confirmed they weren't top of the conference good.
Especially weird was they dominated the Sugar Bears in 5 sets, 25-27, 25-20, 29-31, 25-17, 11-15. The Mavericks lost two sets by the bare minimum in what other sports would call overtime. But here's the weird part. The Mavs lost a match where they had 12 more kills, two more aces, five more assists and trailed by two in blocks and one in digs. UTA out hit UCA .185 to .095, as the Mavs had four less errors. Rarely will you see that stat line attached to a loss. It certainly was a winnable match that got away in the fifth set.
A three-set loss to the Golden Hurricanes showed the Mavericks were a tad behind Tulsa with only the third set close at 23-25. The Mavs did rebound with a sweep of the normally solid Oral Roberts Golden Eagles. After this tournament, I firmly believed UTA was a top-third WAC school.
The Mavs had only one mid-week match this non-conference season and that was on the road at Texas Southern. The SWAC is not known for the quality of their volleyball and UTA has not lost to a SWAC school in 17 previous attempts and that certainly did not change in a three-set sweep where the closest set was 25-20.
UTA ended with a fairly hard part of their non-conference with North Texas, McNeese and Texas A&M-Commerce. I don't want to insult the casual fan, but obviously North Texas is the hardest part of those three. In a complete surprise to me, the Mavs swept the Mean Green. At 26-24, 28-26 and 25-20, it was the closest sweep I've seen in a while. If it weren't a College Park Center, then it might have been a loss, but a win over UNT is always a good one either way. The other two matches weren't close as UTA claimed their third tournament in four tries.
Finishing the first season at 11-2 was certainly nice. It was the best non-conference schedule finish since 2004. But, like I've said several times, it wasn't challenging by a long shot.
What isn't a long-shot challenge is the start of Western Athletic Conference play. I mentioned earlier I thought the Mavs were a top-third school. Included in that list was the first two opponents on the conference schedule.
UT Rio Grande Valley opened WAC play in College Park Center. The defending regular season champions were picked third in the preseason poll. They played the hardest schedule of any WAC school in my opinion and came into the match with a 6-7 record. Two of those losses were to ranked teams and another two were to California schools, which stereotypically play very good volleyball.
The Mavericks lost their first conference match, 1-3. For the first time this year, they looked flat coming out, losing 16-25. Things went back the way I expected them to in a much tighter second set, 23-25. Down 0-2, the Mavs played with intensity in the third, winning 25-18. That didn't carry over at the start of the fourth as they trailed 1-5, 2-6 and 9-16 early on, they made a frantic comeback, but fell short 23-25.
This past Monday, the Mavs traveled to the defending tournament champs, preseason favorite and the holder of the best non-conference record in Stephen F. Austin. In a shame of what I consider a rivalry match, UTA got blown out in a way that hasn't happened this season, getting swept 20-25, 12-25 and 17-25. My wife described it as it looked like they didn't care. I think SFA is really good. Hard for me to think they couldn't rise up for SFA, but maybe. Based on what I've seen, this is Stephen F. Austin's race to lose.
So to answer the question of this post, are the Mavs in bad shape in the conference race? Based on the fact that they played two of the top three teams, Grand Canyon is the other, that I believe will be in the top, I'm inclined to say no. They have the ability to beat anyone. They just not may be at the top level. It certainly appears that the Mavs are a long-shot to make it to the NCAA tournament. But I still think they will finish better than their pre-season ranking.
The Mavericks will have a chance to even their conference record with a road trip to Seattle and Utah Valley. The Redhawks were picked last in the pre-season poll and nothing I've seen to this point makes me think they'll do terribly much more than that. The Wolverines beat a Utah squad that was receiving votes in the top 25, but are currently 6-6. UVU is a disappointing 4-9 overall. Their losses weren't close. They have a conference loss to a dark horse in Tarleton to go with their five-set win against Abilene Christian.
The test continues as Grand Canyon and California Baptist come to College Park Center next week.
As far as the overall conference performance, the WAC had an overall successful non-conference outing. The goal for the conference at this point is for the win column to be higher than the loss column. As a whole, the WAC is 72-58. I'm not ranking the strength of schedule between conferences, but wins are important in the final rankings, and tournament seeding.
First serve for the Seattle match is set for eight Central.
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