UF volleyball set to make home debut
Published: Thursday, September 2, 2010 at 5:31 p.m.
Last Modified: Thursday, September 2, 2010 at 5:31 p.m.
The Florida volleyball season is only a week old. The team has played just two matches and has yet to suit up for a home contest, yet the Gators already cut its ranking in half.
After registering at No. 13 in the preseason AVCA poll, the Gators jumped all the way to No. 6 after a weekend that saw a 3-1 defeat of No. 9 Iowa State and a five-set thriller win over No. 2 Nebraska. Florida will play its first home matches of the season today in the Campus USA Credit Union Invitational.
The four-team event starts at 10 a.m. with Bowling Green taking on No. 15 Colorado State, followed by Florida and Albany at 12:30. Colorado State then battles Albany at 5 p.m. and the day ends with Florida's second match, a 7:30 contest against Bowling Green.
"We haven't played two matches in one day in a long time," Gator coach Mary Wise said, "but we felt like this group is one that needed to play as many matches as possible."
Invitational play concludes Saturday with Florida and Colorado State at 4 p.m. and Albany battling Bowling Green at 6 p.m.
Wise doesn't expect a let down from her team's opening-weekend performance despite the lack of Top-10 teams in this field.
"Just like we don't spend any energy talking about our ranking, we don't spend any energy talking about our opponent's," she said.
The event is the final tuneup the team has before next weekend's inaugural Nike Volleyball Big Four Classic at the O'Connell Center. The field there will consist of No. 1 Penn State, No. 2 Texas, No. 3 Stanford and the Gators. But Wise isn't looking past this weekend in preparation for the season's biggest meeting.
"Whether the sport is volleyball, basketball or football, a team's best opportunity to improve from your first week to your second," Wise said. "Even though the results were positive a week ago, we know that a number of our weaknesses were exposed. We hope we can negate some of those and continue to improve."
On Saturday, a free shuttle will run from parking lot IX on campus for volleyball fans looking to avoid football postgame traffic. Parking restrictions for Friday’s matches are lifted from 9 a.m.-3 p.m. and fans may park in the O’Connell Center parking lot during that time without penalty.
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