Game v Marienlyst

We played Marienlyst last Saturday, and they are easily the best team in the country. They have 2 North Americans (setter and opposite) and a Brazilian OH (Santos). The dude is amazing. He was player of the year last year, is about 6-0 and bounces for his height like no one I've ever seen. He hit the ceiling several times during warm ups. Oh, and he passes nails.

I got the start, but we started off passing pretty shakily, with at least 3 or 4 overpasses from easy floats. We settled down and I connected with Goat (the middle) pretty well, but we were just too far behind at that point. Against a team like Marienlyst, you just can't concede easy points.

The second set started out well for us, a couple good kills from Goat allowed me to open up some 1 v 1 with my outsides, but I was hesitant to use my opposite too much when he was matched up v Santos. He won a couple balls but not enough to give me confidence to set him, especially when he was out of the backrow. This was something I should have adjusted to, and found a way to get him more sets. Also, we had our 4th outside in, Joakim wasn't doing well, and Tue got blocked a couple times, making me feel like I didn't have many options. I ended up running a lot of backrows with Dennis as a result, who I connected with well. We were neck-in-neck until about 20, but they just pulled away with some great counter-attacking. Their block is so big that they were able to get a lot up off touches or channeling the ball to defenders. There was a stoppage in the game for about 10 minutes when two players on the other side ran into each other, and ended up bleeding from their heads all over the court. The outside had to come out, and I felt optimistic that we could take a set off them with their 3rd outside playing and the score at 18-19, but we couldn't pull it off.

The third set saw the coaches switch the opposite to OH so I could get him more balls, which was probably a good move, and should have made a difference, but our form in the last set was appalling. Poor passing, me missing connections with Fleming, and missed chances in all facets. I came out for Morten at about 5-10, and things didn't get much better from there.

Marienlyst is a really good team, and will probably be the first seed for playoffs. Their service pressure gave us the most problems, and its always really tough to get in an offensive rythym if you don't have all your options early in a match. I've also never seen a team counter-attack so well, in the US or here. Granted we gave them a lot of easy balls at times, but even off of good attacks they still had 3 options half the time. The good news though is we still play them three more times, and things can only get better from here.