13-11, Rice calls timeout.

Rice 13-11

Rice finishes the comeback, 15-11!

Rice wins 15-11

Great comeback win. We really cleaned it up after the first two sets-- hardly any attack errors those final 3 sets. The biggest factors were the block differential (14 for Rice to just 4 for the Coogs) and the enormous differential in attack errors (34 for UH vs. 17 for Rice).

Nicole bounced back nicely from her nightmare of a 1st set, but she needs to clean up her service game.

Any word on what's up with Anota?

Rice is usually hush on things. I'm wondering if she had any contact with any of the basketball players. Usually if it is an injury they still show up at the game, especially a home one.

BTW, aside from the blocking, I thought another area of major improvement was Carly's setting. The backcourt (and, especially, the libero) struggled the first couple sets getting her the ball in a position to set, but from then on in her sets were right on the mark and much closer to the net than they were last year.

On the negative side, we haven't yet settled on a libero to replace LeeAnn Cunningham, and it showed. While the combination of Grippo, McCardell and LaBue were solid defensively, they were inconsistent in their ability to get the ball to Carly in a position to set up the offense. I know it's early, and Genny will eventually shorten her rotation of players, which will better allow them to get comfortable with each other, but the lack of experience playing together really showed yesterday, especially early.