Volleyball team readies for single road match in Houston
Ehsan Azad / Staff Writer
After failing to win a set in two losses on last weekend’s road trip, the Mean Green volleyball team looks for answers as it prepare for another road match against Rice University on Friday.
A goal for UNT (12-12, 4-4) was to play better on the road, but with last weekend’s losses, the team is starting to search for a possible reason why it isn’t performing well in away games.
“We haven’t given ourselves opportunities – we’ve fallen behind early,” head coach Andrew Palileo said.
In the game against University of Texas at San Antonio on Sunday, the team fell behind 10-1 in the first set. The team rallied, but the initial deficit was too much in a 25-23 loss. Palileo said many of the issues are mental errors and that match could have easily gone the other way.
“You can’t make those mistakes against the good teams, because you can’t get away with it,” Palileo said. “The good thing is that there are things that we can control and get better at.”
The players said the key to succeeding on the road is playing as a team.
“We need a bigger sense of unity,” junior outside hitter Hanna Forst said. “Because we play well as individuals, but we aren’t going to win playing individually.”
Forst said that they must be able to play better as a team for the rest of the season in order for them to be successful once the team reaches the conference tournament. Other players talked about the mechanics of the game that need to be fixed.
“We got to eliminate how many runs we allow teams to get,” junior outside hitter Eboni Godfrey said.
UNT will match up against Rice (6-16, 3-5), who currently holds a 7-1 all-time advantage over the Mean Green. The last time the two teams played was a Rice win in 2000.
“They are a pretty fast team,” Palileo said. “They are a quick offensive team and overall quick system team.”
One of the advantages the team will have is getting Friday off before they travel to play Rice, which Palileo said will give his a team a chance to rest physically and mentally.
The match tips off in Houston at 1 p.m.
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