Mary Wise has no doubt that her team can attack the ball. But the Gators’ defense is full of question marks.
This past weekend, No. 15 Florida traveled to University Park, Pa., to compete in the Nike Big Four Classic, where losses to No. 4 Texas and No. 8 Stanford revealed the team’s weaknesses.
The Gators’ digging in the back row was one of Wise’s major concerns following the tournament and the exhibition match against the Slovenian Junior National Team on Monday. After Saturday’s match against the Cardinal, Wise said her personnel didn’t match up with those top-10 teams, and her players will have to develop those skills as the year progresses.
“We’re not there yet,” Wise said. “We scored enough points to win those, we blocked enough balls, we had enough faces, we had enough kills. We just didn’t keep them from scoring.”
Florida allowed season-high hitting percentages of .313 and .331 against Texas and Stanford. Although the Gators’ offense kept pace for the majority of the weekend’s matches, Wise is still counting on the two primary defensive specialists, Taylor Unroe and Madison Monserez, to make Florida a balanced squad.
Both Unroe and Monserez said the issue is not skill or ability but chemistry and focus.
“Sometimes it’s like a disconnect,” Unroe said. “We’ll hesitate for a ball, and I think once we stop hesitating, once we just get to the ball, we can compete with anybody.”
Even with Kelly Murphy and Kristy Jaeckel, who combined for 34 percent of Florida’s digs last year, Florida still ranked 259th out of 321 NCAA teams with 13.59 digs per set. This year, the Gators have only 13.4 digs per set.
“We have the ability,” Monserez said. “We kind of were a little more laid back and, ‘We’ll get the next one,’ kind of thing. I think in the future we are definitely going to be, ‘We need it now, we need this point.’ We don’t just let balls fall. Every point is important.”
Sophomore Taylor Unroe digs the volleyball during a game in 2011. Hesitation on defense hurt the Gators against top-ten opponents in Texas and Stanford at the NIKE Big Four Classic last weekend, she said.
