Women’s Volleyball at the Hawaii Tournament

Long Beach State women’s volleyball goes 1-2 at the Hawaii Classic against an all top 25 field.

The volleyball team from Long Beach State ventured to the islands to face three top 25 teams and fared pretty well, beating Ohio State and losing to UCLA and Hawaii in close matches. The Beach played the Bruins, the tournament champions, the toughest and controlled their match against Ohio State. The 5 game thriller against Hawaii showed the team that you can play well overall but cannot make mistakes during the key moments of a match without it coming back to bite you. All in all the trip was a success with key freshman getting plenty of minutes against top competition, while the entire team worked out some early kinks.

Observations

Very well run tournament with the host school and their fans being very hospitable.
UH’s parking control is top notch, 7,000 fans exiting their parking structure in blazing speed.
Hawaii’s concession stands sell more food and beverages at one match then LBSU sells the entire year at the Pyramid – for all sports.
The amount and variation of food vendors reminded me of the Jewels of the Night, outside the quality of course.
The entire stadium smells of garlic fries.

LBSU

Caitlin Ledoux played very well throughout the tournament and made the all-tournament team.
Janisa Johnson was spectacular at times and scored some key points in the team’s victories.
Lauren Minkel played well and was greeted fondly by the Hawaii crowd.
Overall the team played very well defensively and had the Hawaii crowd roaring in appreciation.
The team held all of their opponents to hitting percentages below their season average.
In both loses, LBSU played well through the mid point of the first set before becoming error prone, giving their opponent a cushion to close out the set.
Of the 75 points Hawaii scored against LBSU, 41 came off Beach errors: 30 hitting and 11 serving.
Long Beach State’s right side attack was inconsistent during key stretches of the tournament.
During the decisive 5th set against Hawaii, LBSU had 3 serving and 3 passing errors.

Opponents

UCLA is a deep team that puts up a very big block. They won the tournament because they were the most poised team in the tournament and made the least amount of errors when it counted.
Hawaii is a small team that plays big. There entire team just hits the ball as hard as they can and they have some real hitters. Jane Crosen, previous LBSU recruit, killed the Beach with both her hitting and serving.
Ohio State is a fun team to watch as they try to play at a fast tempo but were a cut below the other teams at the tournament.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 6th, 2011 at 8:00 pm. It is filed under Featured, Volleyball, Women's Volleyball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.