Sooner Volleyball - Round 2 - Faces Baylor and Kansas this Week

[OUBeliever56A]

The second half of the Bog 12 Volleyball schedule starts tomorrow night against Baylor at home in McCasland Field House at 6 PM. The Sooners will then travel to Lawrence, KS to play Kansas on Sunday at 3 PM to complete this weeks play. Here is the staff writers article about the week.

https://soonersports.com/news/2022/10/2 ... -this-week

In the first round of the Big 12 schedule, Oklahoma traveled to Waco to play Baylor and almost pulled off an upset against the Bears. Even though the Sooners lost 2 sets to 3 sets, it might have been the best effort of the season by the Sooners considering the team they played. Baylor is currently ranked 13th in the AVCA Coaches Poll. Baylor is in a tie for 2nd place in the Big 12 with a 6-2 record an 17-4 overall record. In the first match with Baylor, OU won the 1st and 4th sets. Baylor won the decided 5th set 15-10.

In the first round Oklahoma dropped three straight sets to the Jayhawks in McCasland Field House as Kansas won decisive sets with Oklahoma not reaching more than 17 points in any of the sets. Kansas is in a tie for r4th with a 5-3 record and a 15-5 record overall. Kansas is unranked in the AVCA Coaches poll.

Oklahoma owns a 1-7 record in the Big 12 and a 11-9 record overall. The Sooners have dropped 5 straight matches in Big 12 play since their win over West Virginia. In their 5 losses, the Sooners have won 7 and dropped 15 sets. So the Sooners are competitive and play very at times. But the teams consistency in their ability to attack the next with powerful shots would help them a great deal. The Sooners do have the ability and talent to defeat all the Big 12 teams if they can play their best over 5 sets and on those very important last ten points of a set. Both games will be televised. The Baylor match on ESPN+ Sooner Vision and the Kansas Match on ESPNU.

This week will be a tough challenge for the Sooners to do just that against Baylor at home and Kansas on the road.

Good luck to the Sooner VB'ers this week.

Boomer Sooner!

[OUBeliever56A]

Here is the staff writers article post-match about the Sooners hosting Baylor on Wednesday night in volleyball.

https://soonersports.com/news/2022/10/2 ... -13-baylor

The set scores were extremely close as Baylor won the match 3-1 with the following set scores: 20-25, 22-25, 25-20, 23-25. Baylor won 5 more points in the match but won the match 3 sets to 1. The Sooners had to play well last night to stay that close to a strong Baylor squad. I will watch the match later today to see for myself. (I was at the softball Battle Series 4 last night.)

The Sooners went back to using just 9 players in the rotation. It looks like the starters for each game were as shown below;

Setter- Chamberlain, Libero- Kemohah, OH- Wilson, Preston, MB- Oliver, Perkins, Def Spec- Kaminski. Talpash was used as a Des Server and Shelton was used in rotation as an OH.

Preston (FR) had one of her better nights as a Sooner with 15 kills, a .371 hitting% and 17.0 points. It looks like she was used full time also as she had 11 serving receptions and had 2 service aces. Wilson (SO) added 16 kills, 3 service aces, 17 receptions and 20 points. Kemohah and Kaminski lead the back row defense with 131 receptions/ 11 digs and 22 receptions/11 digs respectively Chamberlain had 41 assists on the night with only 1 error.

The Sooners won the 2rd set behind a strong performance at the net with a .364 hitting% with 9 kills and a 70% side-out effort against Baylor. Both were team highs for Oklahoma during the match. An odd stat was that in the 3rd set, Oklahoma never trailed and the score was never tied during the set. The Sooners led and won the set wire-to-wire.

Good luck to the Sooners on Sunday up in Lawrence, KS against Kansas.

Boomer Sooner!

[OUBeliever56A]

I was able to watch the OU-Baylor Volleyball Match yesterday on ESPN+. As I thought from looking at the box score, the Sooners did play pretty well against Baylor. In fact the outcome could have been different.

After Baylor played their best set in set 1 and won 25-20, the Sooners might have outplayed the Bears in the next three sets. The Sooners held a lead at 21-18 in Set 2 before dropping the set 25-22. After the Sooners won set 3 with a 25-20 score, OU once again held a lead at 20-16. Again, Baylor fought back as they did in set 2 and managed to win the 4th set 25-23. The match was very close. With very few points changing, a fingertip on a block or a serve that is 1 foot shorter could have changed the match and OU sent the match to five sets, or maybe even won the match in 4 sets, 3-1 instead of the loss 1-3.

The Sooners are a bit snake-bit right now. The effort is surely there for them. If you watch Kemohah and others receive those kill shots and dig the ball off the court and keep the ball in play or you watch the hitters elevate and hit high-velocity shots across the net, the Sooners are working hard to change the outcome of the matches.

Maybe the Sooners can break through at Kansas on Sunday. If you aren't watching the NFL on Sunday, turn your TV to ESPNU at 3 PM and watch the Sooner Volleyball Team play Kansas. You might be surprised how athletic the teams are.

Boomer Sooner!