Volleyball makes quick exit

The scene was all too familiar.

The Hornets were knocked out of the first round of the NCAA volleyball tournament Friday as the Minnesota Golden Gophers swept three games at the University of Southern California. The game scores were 15-9, 15-10, 15-10.

For the second time in three years, the Hornets were not able to advance past the first round in the national tournament and this year they may have been overmatched.

“We simply were beat by a better team,” head coach Debby Colberg said. “They were bigger in every position and their attack was more balanced than ours.”

According to Colberg, all of the Gophers’ hitters played well while the Hornets did not play their best game.

“Is Minnesota in our ability?” Colberg asked. “It’s a hard call even if we play at our top form. If we played at the top of our game and they slipped a little bit, then we could have won. But if Sac State played its best and Minnesota played at the top of their game, Minnesota would win.”

Prior to the game, seniors Maureen Rafferty and Angela Lewis said that they would be disappointed if they did not advance to the second round. Colberg said that while the seniors were down for the evening, they realized that they were facing a team that was better than they were.

“It was their senior season and they had been out in the first round before,” Colberg said. “They wanted to make regionals, but that may not be in our reach yet.”

As for her own goals for the team, Colberg came up short.

“I have the same goals they do,” she said. “I’m not satisfied with making the playoffs and losing in the first round. I want the program to go further than that. But as far as the players giving me their best shot — they definitely did that.”

The next step for the program is looking toward next season. Colberg said that this season’s NCAA experience would definitely benefit the younger players that will have to step up in order to replace the three departing seniors.

“The tournament and the course of the long season taught them the consistency they will need to play with in order to be successful,” she said. “They know that they have to be mentally strong and fundamentally sound and that if they are the weak link on the team that they will see a lot of balls.”

Colberg believes the biggest lesson the team learned was that if the squad is not playing its best volleyball at the end of the season, they will not make it very far in the playoffs.

While Sac State (22-10) had won 16 of its last 19 games to win the Big Sky Conference, two of those losses came in the week leading up to the NCAA tournament — including a first-round upset loss to Cal State Northridge in the Big Sky Tournament.

The Hornets will not start practicing for next season until the spring, but in the meantime the coaching staff will be busy recruiting to replace the three starting seniors they are losing.

Colberg said that those positions — setter, outside hitter and defensive specialist — are the most essential to replace. She said that the setter they have been recruiting has committed and they have offers for an outside hitter and a middle hitter.

While Colberg is losing three of her top players, she said that the talent is there to keep the team playing at the same level.

“We have some young talented freshman that we will be working hard this spring so they can step in next season,” Colberg said. “We have two good outside hitters, Jayme Wright and Allison Courter, that are very capable of playing at this level.”