Sitting pretty at 14-0 after the first week of Pac-10 play, the Oregon women’s volleyball team is set to face its biggest test of the young season.
This weekend, the Ducks will visit the Bay Area to take on a pair of national powers, No. 8 California and No. 1 Stanford.
And even though Oregon has achieved its fair share of early season success, Duck coach Jim Moore knows his squad is in for a challenge.
“It’s going to be real tough,” Moore said. “People want to make a big deal of what happened in the past, but that doesn’t matter.”
That’s not to say that Oregon’s undefeated start and home sweep of Washington and Washington State are totally irrelevant.
With only one upperclassman in its playing rotation, Oregon is one of the youngest teams in the conference, and a hot start has given the Ducks a needed confidence boost.
“I think that’s the biggest thing, it proved to (the team) that they could be competitive,” Moore said.
The win over the highly-rated Huskies also gave Oregon more insight into what it needed to improve upon to be competitive in Pac-10 play. Several Washington players had big nights hitting, and the Ducks know they will need a better defensive effort to stick with the Bay Area schools.
“If we can block and play defense better, we’re going to have a better opportunity to win some more games,” redshirt sophomore Alaina Bergsma said.
At the same time, the Ducks hope to build off an offensive attack that was clicking on all cylinders last weekend. Bergsma, who earned American Volleyball Coaches Association National Player of the Week honors for her 33-kill weekend, said Oregon’s passing was on target.
“We passed really well and that helped (setter) Lauren Plum open up the offense and distribute the ball really well,” Bergsma said.
Oregon will need to repeat that feat to have a shot at knocking off two of the nation’s premier teams.
Despite the loss of last season’s Pac-10 Player of the Year, Hana Cutura, Cal is 12-0 and leads the conference in hitting percentage (.347). Oregon split its two meetings with the Bears last year.
To beat Cal, the Ducks will have to slow down the powerful combination of setter Carli Lloyd and outside hitter Tarrah Murrey. Lloyd ranks fourth in the Pac-10 in assists, while Murrey checks in at No. 3 in kills.
That said, Moore has no plans of changing his team’s approach to combat such a dynamic opponent.
“(To beat) Cal, it’s the same thing it is with everybody,” Moore said. “We’re going to have to serve and pass really well, and if we pass, then we can run our offense. We have to block better and keep digging balls.”
The same will hold true on Saturday against the nation’s best team, Stanford, who ended Penn State’s 109-match winning streak earlier this year.
Stanford has excellent depth, but is best known for its senior outside hitter, Alix Klineman. Klineman made the All-Pac-10 team in each of her first three college seasons, and presents a challenge for any defense.
“I don’t know that you can control Klineman,” Moore said.
Although the Ducks were able to contain the Pac-10’s kill leader, Washington State’s Meagan Ganzer, over the weekend, Klineman poses a different kind of threat.
“Ganzer at Washington State, I said we had to be able to slow down, but (Klineman) is a kid who touches 11 feet, so she basically renders the block non-existent because she can go right over the top of it,” Moore said.
And though the Ducks can take some consolation in a 3-2 home defeat of Stanford last season, leaving Palo Alto with a victory will be a tall task.
“They’re very hot right now,” Moore said. “We can try to do some things defensively we were able to do that last year up here, but its another thing to be able to do that down there.”
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