Game v Marienlyst

We went down to Odense on Saturday for our third match of the season against Marienlyst. We knew what to expect from Marienlyst going into the match, but I was unsure what our side would look like. We were short-handed, and only had nine people fit for the match, with me (finger), Tue (knee) and Joakim (alarm clock) unavailable for various reasons. As I had mentioned in my previous post, we needed to do something good away from home to get some positive momentum going for the final third of the season.

The match started off well for us. Marienlyst was playing with some people in different positions and some new starters on the floor, and we were able to take advantage of that and lots of mistakes on their part in the first set, which we won 25-21.

The second set started off well for us, with a 6-1 lead before Marienlyst called their first time out. They had their best team out on the floor at that point, and they slowly chipped away at our lead, scoring a point or two off their own serve each time they sided out. They tied it up at 15 apiece, and from there went on a 10-3 run to finish us off 18-25.

The third and fourth sets went the same way as the rest of the second set. Their setter gave us a lot of trouble off his serve and we couldn't get much going off our own. At the beginning of the fourth set we missed four of the six serves in the first rotation. The third and fourth sets ended up easily in their favor, 15-25 and 17-25.

It's unfortunate we weren't able to take advantage of the big lead we had in the second set. It was interesting to see how the moment we let up with a couple bad plays and mental errors, Marienlyst was able to jump on it and take control of the set. They are usually a team that celebrates pretty loudly, and they had been relatively quiet for most of the match, quieter than us in fact, but the moment our volume and intensity dropped, theirs rose. Maybe that contributed to the fact that they just overwhelmed us the last two sets, but I'm sure it was more than that. If we had been able to play error-free like we did in the first set, I think it would have been a closer game, because by no means were Marienlyst playing as well as they had the last two times we played them at home.

At any rate, we have to put that match out of our minds now and turn our attention to our weekday game Thursday against Arhus. In what is arguably our most important match of the season thus far, we need a win to close the four point gap between us. Tomorrow is also a big day for me, as I have my checkup with the doctor, so hopefully I get the good news that I can play Thursday.