An open-date scouting session may have backfired on the Wayland Baptist volleyball team.
With no match to play Friday night, the Pioneers spent the evening watching the live stream of John Brown University taking on Oklahoma-Panhandle State. The Golden Eagles struggled early in the match in Goodwell, Okla., losing 25-21, 25-20 to a team the Pioneers swept just three days earlier. John Brown wound up battling back to defeat the Aggies in five, winning the last three, 25-22, 25-22, 15-8.
A day later with John Brown in their own gym, the Pioneers came out a bit overconfident, coach
Jim Giacomazzi surmised, and it cost them second place in the Sooner Athletic Conference as the Golden Eagles stormed to a 25-15, 25-18, 26-24 victory in Hutcherson Center.
"A little overconfidence and a lack of mental discipline hurt us," Giacomazzi said. "Mental discipline is part of the reason we had so many hitting errors (26)."
The Pioneers (8-9, 4-2 SAC) fell behind in the opening set 6-1 and never caught up. Wayland managed to close an 11-point deficit to six, 21-15, but the Golden Eagles ran off four straight to end it.
Wayland committed 16 errors and hit -.065 the first set. It got some better in the second, although JBU again rocketed to a big early lead. After Wayland scored the first two points, the Golden Eagles notched the next 10. Wayland again made a nice push midway through with a 7-1 run that closed the gap to 17-13, but that was as close as the Pioneers could get.
Set three was much closer. In fact, WBU held a 17-14 lead and was serving for the match at 24-23, but the Golden Eagles ended it with back-to-back kills followed by a service ace.
"The way we played in the third is the way I anticipated us playing in sets 1 and 2," Giacomazzi said. "We had 16 kills and half as many errors (6 vs. 12) as in the first set.
"We didn't give up and made adjustments and got back into the match. I'm proud of the fact we're a fighting team."
Wayland wound up hitting .066 compared to JBU's .197.
Kellie Kozak led the Pioneers with 10 kills while hitting .103, while
Tatijana Markic added nine.
Lucie Mahelova, mostly a setter thus far, got in some nice attacks and wound up with six kills while hitting .211.
Wayland dug 60 balls, led by 15 from
Jordan Breding in just the senior's fourth match of the season.
Amber Daniel and
Renzelle Horner added 14 digs each, while Horner dished out 27 assists.
The Pioneers managed only five blocks and one ace, "which is very low for us," Giacomazzi said. "That was probably one of our worst serving nights. We had seven errors. Kellie and Renzelle usually are our better servers."
The coach also was unhappy with his team's blocking.
"We lost a lot of blocking opportunities because we're not penetrating, which is something we've worked really hard on, so that was disappointing…how we failed to execute our basic blocking."
The Pioneers are back in action at 7 p.m. (Central) Tuesday in Hobbs, N.M., against University of the Southwest, a team WBU defeated back on Aug. 28, 25-21, 25-23, 25-20. The Pioneers are back home and back to conference play next weekend against Texas Wesleyan and Southwestern Assemblies of God, two teams in about the same place in the conference standings as Wayland.
"We're a work in progress," Giacomazzi said, adding that because of injuries early in the season "right now we're about where we should have been on Sept. 1. The good thing is we're getting better every day. We're starting to get a core group of players who are starting to understand their roles and trust the people to their left and to their right.
"They're starting to play more as one unit instead of six individuals."
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