The Badgers volleyball team looks to bounce back from 0-3 start down in Texas this weekend.
When the Wisconsin Badgers Women’s Volleyball team scheduled matches against Louisville, Texas, and Stanford to start the 2024 season, there was an opportunity for seniors to start their last dance in an epic fashion. There was also, of course, a nonzero chance they could be entering the second week of the season 0-3.
To be a bit cheeky about it, based on this group’s 6-3 record against top 6 teams the last two seasons, the chances of starting 0-3 were approximately 4%. Small, no doubt, but still nonzero.
The Badgers had an opportunity to salvage a 1-2 start to their season-starting gauntlet against No. 5 Stanford on Monday, but their set 1 loss after serving 3 set points was a bad omen of what would become a third loss to start the young season.
Monday’s crowd of around 8,000 was smaller than the lively 14,000+ fans who attended Sunday’s match, but there was still a palpable sense of dejection among the Badger faithful in the Fiserv Forum after their team pulled within 1 after trailing by 6 in the 4th set, only to have their chance at winning upended by a missed set and hitting error when trailing 21-19.
Badger fans have been a bit spoiled by their team’s success in recent years, yes, but it was also probably fair to expect a team with so much experience to compete at the level they did in the first two sets of the Texas match.
Heading to the post-match press conference Monday night, I was genuinely curious about the approach coach Kelly Sheffield would take. Would he take the long view of focusing on building for the rest of the season or was it already time to challenge his senior leaders to step up and clean up the mistakes that plagued the team in Week 1?
Zach Schuster
Junior middle Carter Booth helped set the tone for the press conference.
“I don’t like the phrasing, holding up under it,” she said. “It’s not something where we are on the verge of cracking from. The sky is not falling. We know we are all competitors, and we know that it takes time. We haven’t had the time to do some of these things, to work some of these things out.”
Fans might be disappointed three matches in, but it is clear the Badgers are taking a growth mindset to the 2024 season.
“I did ask this question our locker room, would you rather play the competition we have and go 0-3, or play in three people that just aren’t very good and get 3-0?” Sheffield said. “I think everybody in our program would take the competition that we’ve had right now. And the reason is because there is so much to chew on right now. When you go back and you’re watching the film and breaking things down, that gets everybody excited for getting in the gym.”
Sheffield added, “Nobody in our locker room is real happy that we’re 0-3 to start the season. But each match, we’ve gotten better. And as a coach and as a team, those are the things that, when you’re thinking of how long the season, those are the things that that you are hunting. Can we continue to move on the right path?”
One of the areas where the Badgers noticeably struggled on Monday was closing out sets. The Badgers were up 24-21 in the 1st set, even at 21 in Set 3, and down 20-19 in Set 4 before dropping each. For the season, the Badgers are 1-6 in sets when the score is within 1 point in the red zone (20+ points).
“It’s not an excuse,” Sheffield said, “But there are connections and things that happen throughout the course of practice that we just haven’t done enough,” Sheffield said. “And when you’re playing against a team that is really, really good and is pressing you, then some of those errors are going to happen.”
“What I want to see is how do we respond in those situations. I loved how we responded against a team that really brings an avalanche of pressure on you. I thought we did a really good job of responding.”
Zach Schuster
The Badgers have admittedly faced some adversity coming out of the preseason, with Anna Smrek shaking off an ankle injury and freshman Trinity Shadd-Ceres pressed into a starting role after Julia Orzol also suffered an ankle injury. The Badgers also had freshman Saige Damrow and Lola Schumacher playing heavy minutes as the team tries to find its identity in the back row.
“I’d say all of us have [gotten an education],” Sheffield said. “I thought Lola Schumacher and Saige Damrow have done a really good job. Trinity is had her moments. She’s fighting like crazy to try to keep her head above water right right now; I think the biggest crowd she’s ever played in front of was seven, so these are some pretty big stages against some pretty big teams. I think Charlie’s gotten better at each set or each match.”
Zach Schuster
The work-in-progress nature of the Badgers’ team was also apparent by the lineup the team used on Monday. The coaching staff subbed CC Crawford into the starting lineup against Stanford after she provided a nice boost of energy in the second set against Texas.
The move pushed Anna Smrek out of the lineup, and she did not see the court against Stanford. The returning Second-Team All-American struggled in her first two matches, hitting just 0.130 with 12 errors in just 54 attacks.
One of the hallmarks of the 6-2 era Badgers was their massive block that had the potential to take over matches. One likely drawback of switching to the 5-1 this season was going to be a less potent block.
The team averaged 3.1 blocks per set each of the last two years. Their block rate dropped to 2.0 at the Fiserv Forum, and it felt like they were getting fewer of the block touches that allow the team to extend rallies and go on scoring runs.
Crawford was a huge part of the Badger block the last two seasons, and although she contributed two blocks during the 2nd set against Texas, the team did only notch 1.8 blocks per set with her playing against Stanford.
“Certainly we’re trying to win every match, right?” Sheffield said. “That just goes without saying, but there are matches after this, right? And so some of the decisions are made based off of health and based off of continuing to progress our players and everybody moving forward.”
Another aspect of the lineup the Badgers are trying to work out is back-row play. Sheffield unveiled a two-libero system in the exhibition match against Bradley, and the Badgers continued with Gulce Guctekin and Damrow sharing libero duties. Damrow handled serve-receive and Guctekin played when the Badgers were serving.
The system, admittedly, still seems like a work in progress, as the Badgers were frequently plagued by communication issues compounded by two liberos, a freshman setter, and last season’s libero, Orzol, playing in a DS role.
At this point, the serving game has almost taken on white whale-esque stature for this group of Badgers, and the match against Stanford was a microcosm of that. Stanford tallied a total of 10 aces for the match, including a brutal stretch of three straight aces in the 4th set that put the Badgers in a 16-10 hole.
Zach Schuster
One upshot of the match was the Badgers countered with solid serving of their own. The Badgers only had 3 aces in their first three matches, but they scored seven on Monday, including 3 by serving newb (at least in recent seasons) Devyn Robinson.
“Both teams put a ton of pressure on each other behind the service line,” Sheffield said. “When you’re down there on the floor and you’re seeing some of the movement, some of the fighting that you have to do to keep the keep the ball up in the air, usually those hitting numbers go right down with it because you’re spending so much time out of system. But I thought our backcourt did a great job of battling.”
Fans out there in Badger Nation who enjoy watching Kelly Sheffield coach will no doubt be keenly tuned in to see how the Badgers approach their back row this coming weekend. Cleaning up the back row play is an absolute must if the Badgers are going to get things on track, and well, there is still work to be done.
Zach Schuster
The Badgers now head down to Waco, Texas for Big Ten – Big 12 Challenge matches against TCU and Baylor that are now way more important than anyone would have predicted.
This season marks the 4th season of the mini-tournament that also includes Big Ten rival Minnesota. Friday’s opponent TCU features Melanie Parra, who is averaging 17.5 kills and 3.5 aces per match against Oklahoma and Nebraska, and Saturday’s foe 4-0 Baylor comes into the weekend ranked No. 23.
One of the players the Badgers locker room is going to be looking to during the Texas trip is Carter Booth.
Booth has struggled to match her head-turning numbers from 2023. She is currently hitting just 0.200 (she hit 0.411 in 2023), and she is sitting at 0.75 blocks per set, which is half of her 1.56 tally from 2023.
If anyone had a right to be frustrated and upset following the Milwaukee weekend, it was Carter Booth. And yet, she showed impressive composure and introspection about where her team is at.
“My dad said something recent to recently to me that sort of stood out to me,” Booth shared. “It’s this phrase, losing is easy, winning is hard, right? And losing and winning is not just about the match that happens out there. It’s about our mindset within that match, our mindset after, and how we attack the gym after.”
“It’s easy to lose. It’s easy for us to hang our heads and just say, well shucks, we suck. And just like, it’s not getting better.”
“It’s hard to win that battle. It’s hard to want to get back in the gym. It’s hard to keep our heads held high and still have hope for this team. And I feel like this team is doing the hard thing. We like hard things, right?”
“Even if we’re not winning out there on the court right now, we’re winning the battles that come after in practice, the mindset that happens after a loss.”
Zach Schuster