Notebook: Kansas Volleyball takes exhibition match at Wichita State

The Rock Chalkboard

Kansas Volleyball played an exhibition match at Wichita State on Saturday afternoon. The Jayhawks pulled out a 3-2 win, but for the first three sets, did not look like a team that should be receiving votes in the AVCA Preseason Top 25. I’m obviously not a volleyball coach, but the best word I’ll use to describe it is sloppy. (Yes, I was in attendance.)

So much of it was self-inflicted. For starters, Wichita State was the much more aggressive team (in terms of attacking and hitting) for the first three sets. Then there were the service errors. Oh my word, the service errors. I can’t find a play by play anywhere, but the box score indicates 15 services errors by each squad. At least ¹⁄₃ of KU’s happened in the first set, so that also got better as the match went on.

KU volleyball is young this year, with just three seniors on the roster. They’ll be running mostly freshmen and sophomores out there, and while it’s hard to glean anything from an exhibition match, I expect the season to go a lot like this game, with the team getting stronger as the weeks go by. And if they’re a fringe top-25 team now? Oh, boy. Things could get good again in the next year or two.

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