Even with all the hype — all the preseason talk of Rose Bowls and BCS berths and Mariotamania — football won’t even be the most exciting sport at Oregon until probably November. Not-so-bold prediction: The gridiron Ducks will blow through their nonconference cakewalk and bully the Pac-12 until their meeting with USC. Yawn. Been there, done that.
No, the drama until that Nov. 3 showdown will center on coach Jim Moore’s volleyball team, a group both talented and vengeful after a premature exit from last year’s NCAA Tournament in Honolulu. Then-junior outside hitter Alaina Bergsma was in DIY mode, attempting 81 kills — 19 more than her career high and just 12 shy of the Ducks’ all-time match record — but her one-woman effort wasn’t enough, and the Ducks fell to Mountain West Conference champs Colorado State 3-2 in the first round.
“We were really disappointed. We’re angry,” Moore said after the game. “We’re very angry. We knew, and we felt, it was not a match we should have lost.”
That anger will fuel a Ducks team that returns everyone — there wasn’t a senior on the roster during the letdown in Hawaii. But anger and motivation won’t be enough. To get over the hump and become a team Pac-12 powerhouses like Stanford and USC fear demands consistency.
Last year’s roller-coaster season saw wins against then-No. 1 Penn State and then-No. 1 UCLA (who, by the way, only won the national title), a first for any Oregon team. Then the Ducks knocked off top-five teams Cal and Stanford and looked poised to make a program-defining run until a loss at lowly Oregon State killed momentum just a week and a half before the Tournament. Consistently beating the beatable teams needs to happen if Oregon wants to replicate the success of that other fall program on campus.
So far, so good.
With this season still in its infancy, Oregon (3-0) is in a four-way tie for second in the conference. More impressive is the way they’ve played. At the season-opening Sports Import Classic, the No. 20 Ducks swept Toledo and Houston to set up a tourney title victory over No. 24 Ohio State. After Oregon dropped the first two sets, Bergsma — who else? — spurred a rally and tallied Oregon’s first double-double of the year with 23 kills and 15 digs on her way to Pac-12 Offensive Player of the Week honors and the tourney’s MVP award.
But Bergsma, Miss Oregon USA, can’t be Oregon’s only star in the limelight. Junior setter Lauren Plum is already the program’s all-time leader in assists per set and figures to creep up on the all-time assists list too. Her play this year, as well as senior libero Haley Jacob’s and volleyball/basketball crossover Liz Brenner’s, will eventually decide how big of a load Bergsma will have to shoulder. The more manageable the load, the better shot the Ducks should have down the stretch.
Even more support comes in the arrival of a recruiting class Moore calls “physically the best class I’ve ever recruited, anywhere.” Outside hitters Madison Magee and Martenne Bettendorf and middle blocker Canace Finley have reached “high or higher than our highest touch right now,” according to Moore. Magee and Bettendorf have gotten off to hot starts, both topping .300 during the Ducks’ first tourney. Their progression might be the last piece in the puzzle Moore’s done a masterful job of assembling over his eight-year tenure.
It’s worth seeing if Bergsma, Jacob and the Ducks’ three other seniors can take Oregon volleyball to new heights — especially while Ducks football is hanging another 50-point loss on a team from the Ohio Valley Conference.