Game v Gentofte

We played Gentofte on Saturday night, and they are a team that will be one of our main competitors for the top 4 positions in the league. They are a pretty young team, but solid all around. We were without Goat still, who is nursing a sore back, so Morten Smith got the start at middle again and filled in well. Gentofte's setter started their team out well, serving for about 6 points in a row, and they opened up a lead that we would not be able to overcome. They counterattacked one or two balls in that run, but the rest were just straight blocks. A couple of rotations later I was brought in for Morten to try and get some speed to the outsides and mix things up, and despite the fact we played even with them the rest of the way, the early run we conceded turned out to be too much, and we lost 20-25. In the set I had a double called on me for the first time in a couple years on a ball that I just completely mis-judged. I thought it was coming closer to the net, and I ended up taking the ball behind my head and somewhere outside my shoulder, and it was pretty much guaranteed to be a double. Oh well.

The second set saw Joakim come in for Dennis at the 2nd outside position and Nils move to the first outside. Dennis and Tue came in to serve at different points in the set, and overall we played much more solid. It was close going, with both teams siding out the first ball nearly every time, but we were able to get a few counter-attacks and put them away without too much of a problem, 25-19.

I felt much more confident going into the third, having played the entire second set, and felt I had a good rhythm running the offense out of reception. I had established the middle with Fleming and was connecting with the outsides and getting them some 1 v 1. Gentofte, however, brushed off a poor second set for them and came out playing much better after some personnel changes. They moved some of their players around so that they could have a right side backrow attack when the setter was in the front, which probably made the difference for them. The set was close all the way with Gentofte taking it 25-27.

The fourth set saw the same lineup as the 2nd and third, but we had some reception troubles early and Gentofte was out to about a 4 point lead. You could feel the energy of the team starting to fall, and things were not looking good. However, the coaches made a substitution and brought Dennis in for Joakim, and he and Fleming proceeded to block the opposite from Gentofte about 5 times in a row, and all of a sudden, we were back in it with all the momentum. We had some great defensive plays from Jonas and some good blocking from Fleming, and we ended up taking the set (25-22) and all the momentum heading into the final frame.

We came out to an early lead on the energy of the previous set. The lead got as high as 4, and we were up 6-2 when Gentofte called a timeout. However, they rallied after the break and proceeded to block Nils 3 times in a row, which gave them the lead at the switch, 8-6. I was hesitant to set him again, but he had been winning balls in his matchup v the Gentofte setter, so I went with it and he got blocked again. I was feeling the pressure to get the ball to someone else, so Dennis switched out of reception so I could set him out of the back row. He ended up getting us the sideout, and it was a ballgame again. I set Kesse on the next sideout, and then proceeded to set Dennis as much as I could, who was front row now and had been hitting well. It turns out I didn't need to set him that much as our team decided it would be a good time to put on a blocking clinic for Gentofte. We must have gotten 6 of the last 8 points off blocks, including the match point, when Fleming blocked their middle to seal the victory, 15-12.

It was certainly an exciting game for the fans to watch, and it was definitely a fun match to play in, especially the come-back we had in the 4th and 5th sets. I've never seen a team block so many balls in such crucial moments of a game. There is no doubt our blocking won us the match; it turned the tide in the 4th set and put it away in the 5th. I'm feeling a lot more confident running the sideout offense as well now too. This was by far the best game I have had for the club. I am getting to know the hitters and starting to recognize who needs to be set when in the game. That is probably the most difficult thing to get when you join a new team, and I had it pretty easy in Santa Cruz where I had been for 3 years. The next step is for me to get comfortable in counter-attack, but I think I'm making some progress there already after some good connections with Fleming from dug balls that were off the net. So all in all, a great win for the team, and we now sit at 6 points, tied for second in points but 3rd overall due to set differential. We have next weekend off, and then a home match against Marienlyst on the 18 November.