On a cold winter night in Madison, Wisconsin, the Oregon volleyball team’s season came to an end. After a late season surge into the NCAA tournament, the Ducks were matched up with No. 6 Wisconsin in the first round of the tournament.
Even though Oregon showed lots of fight, the Ducks came up short as they were defeated 3-1 (25-18, 21-25, 25-21, 25-19), thus ending their season. It wasn’t the way seniors Martenne Bettendorf and Chelsey Keoho hoped their college careers would end, but the Badgers proved to be too much to handle.
But the way Oregon’s season ended was far from where it started.
Head coach Jim Moore acknowledged he didn’t know what to expect from his underclassmen-loaded team when the season began, but quickly found out what his team was made of on its first road trip.
The Ducks began their season with nine consecutive road games across four different states in the span of 12 days. During that road trip, the Ducks faced Florida and Nebraska, two of the 16 teams remaining in the tournament.
Oregon emerged from that trip with a 6-3 record, but according to Moore, at least one of the losses was the fault of the coaching staff due to the scheduling of the matches. More importantly though, the Ducks returned a closer-knit team, with a better understanding of what it’s like play in a hostile environment — and, most importantly, with a running mate for Bettendorf.
Freshman Lindsey Vander Weide was arguably Oregon’s best and most consistent player through the first half of the season. Vander Weide took home the Pac-12 Freshman Player of the Week honors during the road trip, when she averaged 3.17 kills per set in matches against George Washington, Florida and Nebraska, and totaled 15 kills against George Washington and 20 against Nebraska.
The Ducks appeared to have found an identity in the match against George Washington, when they fell behind 2-0 but rallied to win the next three sets and steal the victory.
But once Oregon retuned home and began Pac-12 play, the Ducks’ inability to finish out close sets proved to be its demise throughout conference competition.
“We start to play timid,” Vander Weide said after Oregon’s 3-1 loss to UCLA on Oct. 23. “Instead of pounding the ball, we try to take some off and it goes into the block.”
“Just real disappointed that we couldn’t finish,” Moore added after the UCLA loss. “We didn’t put the ball on the floor at crunch time.”
The Ducks played 75 sets against Pac-12 foes and lost by five or less points in 26 of them. So in one out of every three sets the Ducks lost in conference, competition was tight until the end.
“It’s real disappointing,” Moore said after Oregon’s 3-2 loss to Colorado on Oct. 2. “We’re just really struggling with confidence.”
Because of those struggles, Oregon entered the last third of conference play with a 5-8 record, on the outside looking in when the NCAA Tournament came around. Moore’s team, led by the play of Bettendorf, Vander Weide, Frankie Shebby and Taylor Agost, rallied to win five of its final seven games, including upsets over then-ranked No. 9 UCLA and No. 23 Arizona State to ensure the season lasted into December.
Vander Weide earned All-Pac-12 first team honors, as well as All-Freshman honors, and libero Amanda Benson earned an All-Pac-12 honorable mention for the third consecutive year.
Considering the circumstances, Oregon rallied around its youth and got its corps of young, returning players the experience they need to make a deeper run in the Pac-12 and NCAA tournament over the upcoming seasons.
Follow Ryan Kostecka on Twitter @Ryan_Kostecka