I wasn't able to watch the first couple of sets as I had league night, but I was around for the rest of, well, whatever that was out there. I'm back for more observating!
Game Stuffs* The trendline for Taylor appears to be going up in the past week. Can we definitively say she's back? That's up in the air, but last week her passing looked better (to me at least) and tonight she seemed to be terminating much better. We'll see if this trend continues, but it looks like she might be getting back into her groove and it's good to see!
* Conversely, Wucherer has gone from funk to liability. She averaged nearly 3 errors per set between hitting, serving, and passing. To put that into perspective, for every 6 points Iowa scored, 1 was an error specifically by Wucherer. I could maybe live with the attack errors if the serving wasn't as bad. At times, it seems like despite 900 square feet to work with, she can't put the ball in that 30x30 box. It may be time to look at taking her out in some capacity (SS, DS, or bench) to both get her out of the funk and mitigate the volume of errors.
* I'm concerned that we are not seeing Zeynep at all. Nearly any conclusion you want to reach as to why she's not in the lineup does not reflect well on the team (coaching staff) right now. It's certainly not an eligibility issue anymore, and I think there are plenty here baffled by this decision.
* This was an average-at-best Iowa team and we needed 5 sets to beat them. Quite frankly, this probably should have been a sweep given what the Gophers are capable of, but until they figure things out and start executing, expectations for this season probably need to be significantly tempered.
Non-Game Stuffs (that may only interest me)
* If you only listened to the announcers on TV, you wouldn't be blamed if you thought Taylor Landfair was the only player on the court tonight. They couldn't stop gushing over her at every opportunity. It was reminiscent of the early 2000s NFL, where announcers practically confessed their love to Michael Vick on air for every game. I was starting to get to the point where I'm like "Okay we get it, she's having a great game but you're pouring it on a little thick"
* FS1 wins lolcow of the week. Technical difficulties? For a live game? And you're supposedly one of the two biggest sports networks in the world? I don't know exactly how long the outage was, but I think it was at least 15-30 minutes. That's bad, like, really bad.
* That said, what I did like was hearing the dialog between the R2 and the scorer's table on challenges. I don't know if that was by design, but it's a great plus to be able to hear that whole process as it's happening.
* Being color blind sucks. I was watching the game and thought to myself "That's a different look for Keegan" as the shirt didn't look like something I'd expect to see him wear, and his face looked different. I was, of course, going off the shirt thinking it was maroon and gold. NOPE! My dumb, color blind self can't tell apart maroon and black sometimes, and I pegged Barnes as Keegan as a result.
* That dang Firestone ad was back again. Hopefully you all took my advice from the last time and did not do the drinking game for this one, I saw it multiple times tonight.
Now it's on to a tough one in Nebraska. If the Gophers don't play up to the competition and execute, things could get ugly out there.
