Although the Tigers didn’t win either of their matches last week, they battled against two of the nation’s best teams in No. 19 Baylor and No. 14 Iowa State—both on the road. Here’s what Wayne Kreklow had to say about last week’s matches and this week’s upcoming duels against Colorado and Texas Tech:
On the losses to Baylor and Iowa State:
Obviously, we’re never satisfied without the win. But when you go on the road in the conference, it’s tough. Any Big 12 road match is always going to be tough. So while we were disappointed we didn’t come away with the wins, I do think that we felt like our players really—particularly Saturday against Iowa State—competed well. Once again, I think it shows us how close we are to really being that top-level team that we want to be.
More on the Baylor & ISU matches:
I think after the Baylor match, we talked and I don’t think anybody was really satisfied with the way we played there. As I told our team after the match, what’s disappointing about a match like that really is not so much the outcome but the way the outcome came about. I told our team afterwards that we’re a much better team than the one that just played tonight. And for that we need to be disappointed, and the only thing we can do at this point is to go back and get back in the gym and readjust. For us there, it wasn’t so much about what we could or could not do technically, I thought we were a little big sluggish mentally. So our focus when we went up to play Iowa State was to get back and play with a little more of an edge and a lot more focus. I thought our back row really played well. I thought they competed and executed well, which is reflected in our opportunities in both games one and three to take one or both of those, which would have changed the complexion of the match drastically.
On Catie Wilson, who had eight kills in both the Baylor and ISU matches and has played very well this year:
Catie’s doing a great job for us. What Catie does for us is provide a real steady, consistent presence out on the court. And that’s one of the things that, right now as a team, we’re struggling with a little bit. That’s often the case when you have two new JuCo players in the lineup who aren’t used to the speed and playing that level of competition night in and night out. We’ve got some adjustments to make and it’s going to take some time. But the thing Catie is doing so well for us is she’s one of those players for us who is just very steady. She’s a very smart player. She always chooses good shots. You know what you’re going to get with Catie—she’s going to work hard, she’s going to listen, she’s going to be focused out there, she’s going to concentrate, and her numbers reflect that. She’s doing a great job for us.
On the rigors of the Big 12 and not taking anything for granted:
For the newcomers, I think what’s really important to understand when you’re in a conference like the Big 12 is that it’s very easy to go 0-2, 0-3, 0-4 over a week or two stretch. What you really have to do as a player and as a team is you have to understand that things are going to be tough and not to let the one or two losses turn into three or four or affect something that you should do. We’re in that position right now. We had a really tough three-game stretch against three of the better teams in our conference, two of those on the road. What we have to be able to do is recognize that it was a tough situation to be in, but now we’re coming back home, now we have to take care of business at home. We have a golden opportunity at home to get back on track Wednesday night. And that’s what we really have to focus on. It’s critically important that we don’t take anything for granted in this conference because even in a conference like the Big 12, you can have a team like Colorado that on paper doesn’t look like they’re going to be very strong—but in reality, you look at the people they’re losing to and they’re not losing to bad teams. But it’s good to get back home, we’re here all week. Last week was a big travel week. So hopefully we’ll be ready to go Wednesday.
On serving and what the team will work on this week:
I thought our serving against Iowa State—although it didn’t reflect in our ace output—was consistently tougher. We minimized the errors. Our goal when we serve is to take the other team’s middle out of the equation, and I thought we were able to do that far more at Iowa State than we were at Baylor. I think because of that, we were much closer and in position to win several of those games. So we’ll continue to work on the serving. Passing is something we obviously do all the time, as do most teams. The other big thing for us is just consistency and limiting errors. On the way back, the staff and I talked about how we tend to be a slow-starting group. What we gotta be able to do here is we have to start quicker and we have to be able to finish. So we’re going to focus this week on the beginning of games and the end of games—trying to get off to a good start and trying to finish strong. And again, when you’re playing really good teams, a couple of miscues here and there can really come back. What we need to be able to do is make sure we don’t give easy points away. When you lose 28-26 as we did in game three against Iowa State, it’s easy to go back and count up the number of times when we made unforced errors. If you start having more than just a couple, you put yourself behind the eight ball.
