At Penn State-Altoona (25-17, 19-25, 25-15, 25-12)
John's Commentary: "It was tough coming off such a huge win over Kings to play PS-Altoona, who is always fun to play against. We killed them the first game rather easily, they got us the second game, but we absolutely destroyed them after that, because of an apparent non-call on a touch by one of their blockers (I think it was #21), which really fired us up, because they felt they needed that point so badly. They had no ref either so that was real nice (sarcasm). Despite all that, and missing a starter and a top back row player, we still managed to get the job done. It'll be cool to see PS-Altoona out at Nationals, hopefully they'll call their touches out there, and they don't have 74 consecutive hitting errors like they did in Game 4 against us."
Coach's Commentary: "This match presented a real worry to me. Coming on the heals of the Kings match, as it did, we were bound to let down. Having to travel three hours one way didn't help, and without trying to sound arrogant, this was a match the team 'knew' they were going to win. The 'B' team had faced PS-Altoona twice in the Fall, and played them really tough in the second meeting at their (PS-Altoona's) own tournament. We knew their strengths and their weaknesses going into the weekend, and they had never seen our 'A' team. We should have had a big advantage.
We played fairly efficiently in the first game against PS-Altoona. Certainly not inspired, but we blocked, attacked, and served well enough to keep Altoona off-track. But against a different line-up in the second game, Altoona came alive. They shredded our defense (we had NO blocks, and 7 hitting errors, while they had 17 kills and a single hitting error). We could not find the inspiration to play tough from the middle of the game on, and PS-Altoona pulled away for the win.
I could have 'bailed the team out' and subbed the starters back in when things got difficult, but that would have done nothing for the confidence of the players on the court. They needed to have the opportunity to pull the game out on their own merits, not have the coach save their asses by "fixing" things. And, it put pressure on the team to go out and win a "must" game in the third.
And we did. After a little pep talk, our 'best' line-up went out and promptly put Altoona in a 23-9 hole. During the subsequent Altoona time-out, I 'encouraged' the team to keep them at 10 or under, and they "responded" by getting blocked, hitting a ball out of bounds, serving out-of-bounds, and hitting another ball out-of-bounds. So much for my inspirational capabilities.
We changed things up a little in the fourth game, and put them in another huge hole (23-8). At the same point in the game, during another Altoona time-out, they admonished themselves to hold Altoona under 10, and then went out to get blocked, hit a ball in the net, and get blocked again.
So what we learned was that we could go get a big lead, and then coast to victory because the 'rally score clock' will run out before the other team can catch up. It's a lesson I'd rather we didn't reinforce."