So, had to miss the match because of some family issues that popped up, but surprised nobody's posted anything related to the match ... or maybe not so surprised since a lot of times folks only want to talk about good stuff and maybe there wasn't much of that to take from the loss.
Since I wasn't there I guess I'll make some comments based off the box score and anyone with insight can flesh out those thoughts or make some corrections.
My initial impression is that Cruz seems to be going with a heavy youth movement. Lots of freshmen and sophomores getting significant time/experience, but probably some growing pains that are coming with that. The good news with that, I assume, is that Cruz feels he has been able to recruit over the existing talent on the team. I always find this kind of exciting but the seasoning process can be painful. It's a course of action I've wanted some other coaches (football/basketball) to take in the past, but Cruz is the only coach that seems to be willing to take the lumps that go along with the process. Ideally, we'd begin to see progress/results by the start of the MIVA season, and that time is here so I hope they're ready.
With that number of inexperienced players it would seem you would really need the experienced players you have to deliver and looks like Mr. T really had a rough night against Hawaii based off his hitting percentage, especially in that third set. Think the Cards had 7 attack errors along with 2 service errors in that set alone, and Mr. T accounted for 6 of those.
The coaches poll I saw still had the Cards ranked 15th. They've got one win over a ranked team, No. 19 UC-San Diego, at home, and have lost their 5 matches to No. 3 Hawaii, No. 4 Stanford, No. 9 BYU, and No. 12 USC, winning 1 set at most in any of those matches.
They start MIVA play Thursday against No. 11 Loyola Chicago and play No. 8 Penn State on Friday.
Hope those fires start clicking soon.
