He’s off to LA this weekend for the season opening tournament this weekend, then off to Hawai’i next weekend to watch our Glorius Gregory Gazelles take on some even more serious competition from Cal and Hawai’i. Coach Elliot is really putting the girls through the ringer to kick off what could be a march to the national championship, but they’ve risen to the challenge by all deciding to spend the summer in Austin together for volunteer workouts – taking a page out of the football team’s playbook.

This season is our best hope so far to win it all – and maybe the last chance for a couple of years, with the graduation of two of our best players ever, Destinee and Ashley. The results of these two tourneys will give us pretty solid evidence of whether this bunch of Gazelles are up for it.

I look forward to courtside updates from Tempest.

Both Nebraska and K-State lost to Big 10 schools in the AVCA Showcase. In the biggest shocker, the Gazelles’ biggest rivals were swept by #16 Michigan in front of a home crowd in Omaha. KSU lost to #11 Minnesota in the other match. Hopefully the Big XII teams will even the score in the reverse matches .

Game recaps here and here.

Hope the girls can build off last year’s momentum. Weird/cool thing happened in management class last week; I saw that Lauren Paolini was in there. I thought she graduated?

What a comeback. Nothing could go right for Texas in sets 1 and 2. The passing was pretty atrocious. If you don’t pass/receive the serve well you don’t get sets to the middle…that is why Jen, Rachael and Sha’Dare’s kills were anemic. When they got the set, they terminated. In sets one and two there was so much lineup shuffling I don’t think I could recount them all if I tried. The poor passing coupled with the lineup shifting to try to shore up the passing was the story of sets 1 and 2.

In Sets 3, 4 and 5 Texas finally settled on a lineup. Sha’Dare McNeal, the freshman, and Rachael Adams played middle blocker. Jen Doris moved to opposite with Yogi subbing for her in the back row. Juliann & Destinee were the outsides and Ashley ran the 5-1 offense. We dominated LBS in the 3rd and 5th sets. Played a super close 4th set with Long Beach leading late. Jerritt got what he wanted….his team finding a way to win when their backs were against the wall. Hopefully this pays dividends and hopefully we come out better tomorrow against San Diego.

Our girls seem to have lost the first-match jitters and played at the level I would have expected them to, totally dominating the #15 team in a sweep, 25-20, 25-16, 25-19. Texas outhit, outserved and most importantly outblocked (12.5 to 2.0) the Toreros.

Still waiting for Tempest’s courtside report, particularly to see if there was a noticeable improvement in team passing and overall chemistry. Would also be interesting to hear his take on the switch at Setter from Michelle to Ashley. That move was a bit of a surprise to me, but given the talent we have at OH and OPP this season it allows us to take advantage of Ashley’s versatility and height. Michelle will take over the position again next season so I hope she gets some meaningful minutes as the season progresses.

Defending national champion…. Penn State?

The gazelles never seemed to get their due when I was on campus, it’s good to see them well covered on BON.