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Team of the Year

The voting for team of the year ended Sunday, so I thought I'd offer my predictions on who I think will pick up the awards and why.

Outside Hitter - Jonas Napier and Niels Knudsen
Napier passes half the court even in three man serve reception, and gets kills when everyone in the gym knows the ball is going to him. Niels has had a great season for us as well, being a very good passer and attacker on the outside.
Honorable Mention: Tobias Nielsen

Middle Blockers - Mikkel Vestergaard and Flemming Olufsen
Having Mikkel playing again this year has been great for us, and the one-two combination of him and Flemming has carried us at times. The only thing that limits them is our ability to get them the ball.
Honorable Mention: Matthew Lebourdias and Per Eggers

Opposite - Shaun Powell
Easily the best attacker in the Elitedivision, he has the ability to hit over any block from the front or back row.
Honorable Mention: Kasper Munk

Setter - Jordan Hove
Another easy choice. He makes Marienlyst run, and has an excellent ability to turn bad passes into a fast, accurate offense.
Honorable Mention: Sebastian Mikelsons

Libero - BT Knudsen
He made some amazing digs in the cup final, and every time I see him play he comes up with at least one incredible defense ball.
Honorable Mention: Jonas Søndergaard

Newcomer of the Year - Kasper Munk
Served and attacked great against us, and was a big part of Holte's success this year.
Honorable Mention: Simon Bitsch

Player of the Year - Jordan Hove
This is a close call between him and Napier, but if you look at wins and losses, Hove has to take it. He's gotten his team to the finals, and already has two cup wins under his belt. It's difficult for a setter to take over a match the way that an outside hitter can, but Hove still manages to with his serving and defense.

Final #1

The first final was Wednesday night, and it ended up being a disappointing one for us as we lost to Marienlyst 3-1. The set scores were 22-25, 16-25, 25-14, and 21-25.

In both the first and fourth sets we had leads of a few points but couldn't do anything with it, and both the second and third sets were easy wins for Marienlyst and us, respectively. Both teams ended up finishing the match with different outside hitters; Steen came in for Tue and did a good job with his first significant playing time in the postseason, while for Marienlyst Peter Schøler came in for Jon Daze, who seemed to be having shoulder problems.

Our big issue was poor serve reception, which limited our ability to run the middles. Mikkel Søe got four or five points nearly every time he served, and we had trouble in some other rotations as well. We actually managed to win some good points in counterattack, but the high number of points we lost in sideout made those gains negligible.

We now go to Marienlyst in the same situation as last year, and we should expect the environment to be the same: a loud, sauna-like hall and a heavy dose of Powell in attack. We will obviously be looking for a different result this year, and if we sideout better we can send it to a third game.

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Finals Bound!

After a dramatic and hard-fought game Saturday evening, we are headed to the finals for the second straight year. As much as things didn't go our way in the second semifinal Wednesday, they did on Saturday night, as we were able to win points at critical times and come back from big deficeits in the third and fourth sets. The set scores for the match were 25-22, 22-25, 23-25, and 22-25.

The second semifinal on Wednesday wasn't the greatest from our point of view, and we made a ton of service errors that took a lot of pressure off Gentofte. Napier absolutely went off in the first set, serving from 16-13 to finish off the set. He continued to be the offense for Gentofte for the rest of the match, getting plenty of kills from both the front and back row and leading Gentofte to a win.

Saturday night we knew we would have to stop him if we were going to have a chance of winning. We made some adjustments in our block and refocused our efforts on serving, and felt like we could slow him down enough to force other people to make some plays. The first and second sets were very similar; both teams traded sideouts and played tight throughout, with Gentofte taking the first and us taking the second.

The third set was nearly all Gentofte, and they opened up a lead of five or six points late in the set. We didn't get worried, and got three or four points each from Niels and me serving, which put us out in front and gave us control of the set. We sided out to finish the set and take a 2-1 set lead, putting us in firm control of the match.

Any control or momentum that we had was lost, however, when Gentofte came out and opened up a 9-1 lead in the next set. But as in the third, we sided out on the first ball each time and got at least one or two points off our own serve. We tied up the game around 14, and with that came the feeling that winning the set was inevitable. Gentofte looked rattled, and our service pressure ended up being too much for them. We recieved serve at 24-20 (from Napier, who strangely enough was always serving at the end of the sets Saturday night), and they got a couple points, but Thomas got the final kill to send us to the finals.

Thomas deserves some special mention because he came off the bench and played great for us, and was huge in the comebacks in the third and fourth sets. Another thing that made this win so big is that it was the first victory for Aalborg in Kildeskovshallen since 2005.

After Sunday night's other semifinal, we now know we will be playing Marienlyst, in what will be a rematch of last year's championship. The first match is Thursday 9 April at 16:00 in Aalborg.

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Watch the Semifinal Live

Gentofte shows their matches live on the internet, so if you'd like to watch the second semifinal match live, follow the link below to download the software.

Gentofte TV Page

After you have downloaded and installed the program, start it up. Choose the 'sign up' option and register your username. The installation puts a shortcut on your desktop which will take you directly to Gentofte TV.

The match starts at 19:30 CET (10:30 am Pacific) on Wednesday 1 April.

First Semifinal vs Gentofte

The first semifinal was Sunday evening against Gentofte, and we were finally able to get our game back on track and play at a level that we were happy with. The result was a 3-0 win, with set scores 25-22, 26-24, and 25-19.

All the sets were close through the first 15 points or so, with both teams trading serve and the occasional counterattack point, but by 15 in each set we were able to pull ahead by a few points.

We missed at least seven or eight serves in the first set, which was frustrating, but we sided out well enough to limit the damage from that. However in the second set we put our serves in the court and continued siding out well, which got us into a good rhythm. At the end of the second we had a lead of 24-23 with a chance to sideout for the set. Niels got blocked to tie it up at 24 all, but we stayed calm and sided out and got a counterattack point to win.

In the third set Napier switched to opposite, but it was more of the same from us. We got some good serving from Niels and some key blocks from our middles to give us a solid 5 point lead midway through the set. We cruised from there and took the final frame easily.

It felt good for me to finally feel in sync with the hitters again, and I think this was a good team effort, where everybody did what they needed to do to help the team win. We had a good plan going in, plus the confidence of knowing that we've beaten Gentofte every time we've played at home for the last two years. It must be said, however, that we haven't won on their home court in as many years, though I think now is as good a time as any. We have last year's experience of winning semifinal games away from home, which can only help us, and with all the pressure on Gentofte, we will be able to play our game, which this year (as opposed to last season) seems to be better when we are more relaxed.

Pictures (Big thanks to Morten Smith for them!)
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The Last Four Matches

It's been a while (again) since I blogged, and we've had matches against Gentofte, Middelfart, Ikast, and one last weekend against Marienlyst. A lot has changed since the last time I wrote, when we were fighting with Gentofte for a second place spot. We lost our match against them and they are now in first, with Marienlyst second, and our loss to Middelfart the week after has knocked us down to fourth place.

The match against Gentofte was frustrating because we won the first set comfortably, then had several swings for set ball in the second set which we couldn't convert. Gentofte won both the second and third sets 27-25, though in the third we were behind and made a late run to challenge for the set, which turned out to not be enough.

The loss against Middelfart the week after was only our second home loss of the season. It was an ugly game and easy for Middelfart, as we lost by scores of 16-25, 18-25, and 17-25. We didn't have Jonas for that match, and Dimitar got a nasty cut on his had in warmups, so he had to come out because he was bleeding all over the court. Steen came in and played libero and did fine, but we were already out of it at that point. The loss put us behind Middelfart in the table, as we were level on points but with a lower set score.

The match again Ikast a week later was pretty up and down for us. We played decently in the sets we won, and held Ikast to 16 and 17 points, and only 7 in the deciding set. But the second and fourth sets were full of trouble in reception (as we were still without Jonas) and we made too many errors.

We had the next weekend off, then a trip to Odense to meet Marienlyst. We won the first set easily, thanks to a lot of attacking errors from Marienlyst and some decent serving by us. The second set was full of drama because the Marienlyst coach wrote the lineup wrong so that the middle blocker was following the setter in the rotation. The down ref told them to get in the correct position before the set started, but I don't think they realized that the lineup was written wrong. Eventually they got called for some rotation errors, and started complaining about the calls. The refs lost control at that point, and there really should have been some cards shown. The fact that we couldn't win that set was embarassing, considering we got several points from rotation errors, but we made plenty of errors to erase any advantage that might have given us. The fourth and final set went to Marienlyst as well, and ended up not being very close in the end.

The playoffs will be interesting this year because I don't think any team is playing particularly well. We've played the three other playoff teams within a month of each other, and no one really looked to be on top of their game. Gentofte relied on Jonas to carry them but didn't have much else going on, Middelfart came to our place and beat us in 3, but you never know which team will show up with them, Marienlyst looked unmotivated, and we've just lost to those three teams. With the last round of the season meaningless in terms of final position, I'm sure most teams are looking ahead to the semifinal matchups already, though how those will turn out is anyone's guess.