2018 FloVolleyball Big Ten Calendar

Coach's Take: Hugh McCutcheon Examines Gophers' Road Ahead

Coach's Take: Hugh McCutcheon Examines Gophers' Road Ahead

The 12-2 No. 3-ranked Gophers have rocketed off to a 6-0 record in Big Ten play, their best conference start since 1999.

Oct 11, 2018 by Megan Kaplon
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Minnesota head coach Hugh McCutcheon describes his team as “consistent,” “well-connected,” “authentic,” and “resilient.” 

The 12-2 No. 3-ranked Gophers have rocketed off to a 6-0 record in Big Ten play, their best conference start since 1999, and they boast the most efficient offense in the conference and the fourth-best in NCAA Division I, averaging a .302 clip.

When you break the Gophers’ lineup down into individual pieces, it’s even more clear how they swept No. 9 Penn State and No. 8 Wisconsin and toppled No. 5 Nebraska in four.

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Three-time All-American Samantha Seliger-Swenson quarterbacks the offense and is one of only two four-year six-rotation starting setters in the conference (along with Illinois’ Jordyn Poulter).

On the pins you’ve got Alexis Hart, a third-team All-American who has ranked second on the team in kills the past two seasons; Stephanie Samedy, who tallied a team-high 478 kills on her way to becoming Minnesota’s first freshman First Team All-American last season; and Adanna Rollins, a freshman so calm and collected McCutcheon keeps her in for all six rotations and Seliger-Swenson dished her the ball 60 times in the Nebraska match.

Middles Regan Pittman and Taylor Morgan both rank in the top-15 in blocks per set in the Big Ten, and Morgan, a redshirt junior who earned a starting spot for the first time this fall, tops the conference and ranks fourth in NCAA DI with a .429 hitting percentage. 

And don’t forget the littles! Freshman and First Team Under Armour All-American CC McGraw earned the libero jersey, but defensive specialists Lauren Barnes would easily be the starting libero on almost any other team in the country and does a fantastic job as a back-row sub for Hart. With those two in the mix, Minnesota has held its opponents to the lowest number of service aces of any team in the conference.

You’ll be hard-pressed to find a weakness in this Minnesota lineup.

The Gophers do have two losses, however, to Oregon and Stanford in preconference play.

“They played better than us,” McCutcheon said of those two matches. “We were trying to figure out a few things with our lineup and some other bits and pieces but also Oregon played really well, so good for them. The Stanford match was another really good match. We just couldn’t close out a couple of those deuce sets and that’s what happens when you play good teams, the margins are thin and the differences between winning and losing are pretty small.”

That said, the margins have actually been quite sizable in Minnesota’s more recent marque wins. Against Penn State, the Gophers won the hitting battle .262 to .168, out-blocked PSU nine to five, and collected 71 digs to Penn State’s 58. Similarly, Minnesota out-served (6-4), out-hit (.386 to .232), and out-dug (50-41) Wisconsin in a sweep in which the Gophers kept the Badgers under 20 points in two of the three sets.

Even Nebraska, playing at home in a sold-out Devaney Center, couldn’t match Minnesota. The Gophers scored four aces to Nebraska’s one and hit .280 to the Huskers’ .194. 

One thing Minnesota has done well that doesn’t show up on the stat sheet is bring the energy, even when surrounded by eight thousand riled up fans in Husker red. 

“We talked about the idea of creating energy and sustaining energy and how that was up to us on the road,” McCutcheon said on the October 10 episode of the Gopher Volleyball Podcast. “Here in the Pav, there’s a lot of juice in the building, we don’t have to worry too much about that, but on the road, the fact that we could control that was a really big step in our competitive maturation.”

This week, Minnesota faces a top-10 opponent for the fourth week in a row. This time, it’s No. 7 Illinois, which boasts a 15-2 record and five wins over top-25 teams. As a team, the Fighting Illini have the third-best hitting percentage in the conference (.283), hold their opponents to a .161 percentage, and are the conference’s second-best serving team with 1.79 aces per set.

On the individual level, Illinois outside hitter Jacqueline Quade leads all players in the Big Ten with 4.16 kills per set, setter Poulter is second in the conference with 11.44 assists per set, and Taylor Kuper is one of the best servers, with 24 aces, an average of 0.39 per set.

“Another great team in a great conference, [Illinois will] give us everything we can handle I’m sure,” McCutcheon said. “They are a tough serving team and they’re certainly scrappy on the defensive end of things. Offensively they’ve got a lot of good arms and a lot of different ways they can attack you.” 

A win on Friday would complete Minnesota’s set of victories over each of the four other Big Ten teams ranked in the top 10, but on the Gopher Volleyball Podcast, McCutcheon emphasized that he and his team try not to obsess too much over the results.

“As much as the outside world—and this sounds a bit dramatic—but the media, fans, families, friends, whatever, really get wrapped up in the result, we need to get wrapped up in the process. This consistent commitment to our process, our way, the things that we’re building our program upon and this idea of consistently getting better and learning and changing, those are the things that have been the foundation of it and those are the things we have to hold on to most dearly now as we continue through the season.”

Watch Minnesota vs. Illinois LIVE right here on FloVolleyball, Friday, October 12, at 7 PM CT.