Little better

Well, we made our bed yesterday and today we slept in it. How's that for a totured metaphor? What I mean is that because we mailed it in yesterday morning, we paid for it today with an opening match in bracket play against the class of the tournament, Christian Community from Ohio. Yesterday they embarrassed us; today they just beat us.

We did play much better than yesterday, but Christian Community is probably the best team we played all year, including Faith of Lafayette. They play excellent defense, they hustle, they set well, they dink intelligently and they hit. Did I miss anything? Anyway, the result of the best of five match was three straight losses for us, 25-15, 25-16, 25-14.

If we had played better yesterday, especially against our second opponent, Girard Alliance, we would have seeded higher and perhaps made it to the second round or even the final, as Christian Community is better than anyone else here and we wouldn't have had to face them first. We would have faced a lesser opponent in the first round and then who knows what might have happened.

Moving on to our first round in the fifth place bracket (I prefer that to the "loser's bracket"), we faced a pesky Porterville Christian (PA) team. We played so-so in the first game, with good hustle and weak offense. No team had a greater lead than four, which was Porterville at 20-16. They also led at 21-18 and 23-22, but we eked out a 26-24 win. The second game did not start like the third. Cal/Cal took an early lead and stretched it to 18-8. At that point our mistakes started adding up and Portersville started playing better and pretty soon it was tied at 24. Finally the Patriots were able to get the requisite two point lead and won, 27-25.

The third game was more representative of what all three games should have been, as the Patriots started getting their act together and Portersville began to fall apart. Our girls jumped to a 24-8 lead, and after trying to get Amy a kill for a few points, they finished off their opponent, 25-12.

Tomorrow we take on Riverdale from Maryland for fifth place. From what we've seen of them, we should be able to do it.

Coach Carr is already making phone calls to get us back to NACA next year. More details to come. You already know most of the reasons from yesterday's post. Add to it poor scheduling and other things, and it all adds up to Tennessee in 2009.

More tomorrow.