Griz open season in Texas

Friday, August 25

Denton, Texas

6:00 PM (MT)

Montana

UTEP

8/23/2017 4:09:00 PM | Volleyball

By: Montana Sports Information

The Montana volleyball team, under first-year coach Allison Lawrence, will open its season this weekend at the North Texas Invitational in Denton, Texas.

The Grizzlies will face Prairie View A&M at 3 p.m. (MT) on Friday and Tulsa at noon (MT) and North Texas at 6 p.m. (MT) on Saturday.

Matches will be played at the 600-seat North Texas Volleyball Center. The only coverage will be live stats, links to which can be found on GoGriz.com.

The tournament will be the first of four for Montana leading up to the start of Big Sky Conference play on Sept. 21.

The Grizzlies will play three matches next week at Utah Valley, then travel to tournaments at Drake, in Des Moines, Iowa, and Southern Illinois-Edwardsville.

League play will open with a road trip to Eastern Washington and Idaho.

Five burning preseason questions for coach Allison Lawrence:

1. How would you describe your excitement level going into your first matches as a collegiate head coach?

AL: It's really high. Probably 11 out of 10. I almost need to tone it down a little bit, because you can't operate effectively in that high of a state of anticipation.

The same goes for the team. We're excited to get out of our gym and go play an opponent, but we can't get overly excited in a way that it distracts us from our normal routines. We need to be intense and enthused but calm at the same time.

2. You've been an assistant coach the last 10 seasons, the last seven at Montana. As you prepare to take your first team to Texas, how are the two roles -- head coach vs. assistant -- different? Is there a different level of stress?

AL: You can call it stress in that it all falls on me now. Everything that happens this weekend is an outcome that results from the decisions I've made leading up to this point.

If we play well, you can look back and say we've been making good decisions since day one. Or if we're not playing well, I took us somewhere that was incorrect at some point, and I need to fix that.

That's where the stress can come from, when you're overanalyzing every little thing. It takes some discipline not to get caught up in the negative stress.

It's better to say, okay, this is where we are. Let's look forward to after the tournament working on fixing or improving those things.

3. You've been practicing for a little more than two weeks, since Tuesday, Aug. 8. How do you think the preseason went?

AL: It went really well, but I've tried not to measure it in a way that puts us in one of two camps, one being, we're great, the other being, I don't know if we're going to have a great year.

In order for us to be at our most healthy, mentally and emotionally, we need to be really present right where we are. There is a challenge directly in front of us, and that's the only challenge we need to think about.

Whether that means we're going to be successful in some long-term way, I don't even think that's relevant. All we need to be focused on is, did we step closer to what we want today, and are we prepared to handle the obstacle that is tomorrow? And that's it.

Trying to operate right there is hard, because it's easy to project and assume, but I think that's what's going to make us best from day to day.

4. Friday against Prairie View A&M, tied one set apiece, the third set tied 23-23. Are you ready for that moment?

AL: I'm as ready as I'm going to be, and I think the team is as ready as it's going to be.

What I love about matches is that it is our players' time to show who they are and what they have. The less that I stand in their way during a match, the better.

My way to prepare for that situation is to have all the different ways things can go, either written down or in my head, then be able to make a quick adjustment if we need to make an adjustment. Other than that, it's time to let them play.

5. What's the biggest question mark for you going into this weekend's matches?

AL: How we're going to react to stress and how we're going to react to a setback.

When we have some success, it will feel incredibly validating and give us a ton of momentum. But my question is, when we stumble or hit an obstacle, will we bring back the weight of what we've been through the previous years and make it a part of what we're dealing with now? Or are we a new thing?

That's my biggest question, and I hate to bring it up, because then you make it a thing, but at the same time, that's going to be such a big indication. Are we new and are we better? Or are we halfway formed with this old chunk of problems still being carried around?

Two things to watch for:

After a spring and preseason of practices, who will emerge as the team's primary setter?

Raegan Lindsey was Montana's primary setter last fall, but she graduated. Ashley Watkins, then a freshman, also got plenty of time at the position last season.

In the spring Montana added Brittany Gay, a transfer from North Idaho College.

"I give them so much credit for how the two of them have handled the competition between them," said Lawrence. "There were moments in the spring when one clearly beat out the other, whether it was for a tournament or just a day. And that kind of flip-flopped.

"Going into the summer, I didn't know who would be our starting setter. Even now they are both neck and neck fighting it out. When they get their opportunities this weekend, they are going to have to take the job."

At Friday's scrimmage, the players' numbers were mostly similar, though Gay's teammates had a better hitting percentage, coming in at .179, though that could be attributed to the personnel makeup of the teams the two led.

Both will see action this weekend.

"They have been each other's support but also each other's fiercest competitor in a way that has brought out the absolute best in both of them," said Lawrence.

"We started with two half-setters. Ashley was still more of a hitter than a setter and not really confident running a team. Brittany was a setter but not necessarily disciplined enough mentally to set a good match. Now I think we have two very complete setters.

"It makes our job really hard, but that's what you want. There is no reason we can't use both of them this weekend, whether we're struggling and need a new look or whether we're doing well and just want to get them both some experience. It's pretty wide open."

Can Montana shake free of its offensive limitations of last season?

The Grizzlies hit just .117 as a team in 2016, by far the worst percentage in the Big Sky Conference and one of the lowest in the entire nation.

Montana just couldn't keep up scoring-wise with opponents who were putting down nearly two kills more per set and committing nearly eight fewer hitting errors per match.

Part of it was technical (think: footwork and other mostly unnoticed nuances of pre-attack preparation), part of it was mental (think: going again and again to a comfortable bread-and-butter shot, even though that's easily able to be scouted and defended against).

"It's a tough problem, because there are mental issues as well as physical ones," said Lawrence. "We've tried to address it both in training and holistically in how our culture was operating in the gym.

"We've tried to train better movements off the ball and how to make better choices once they are in the air.

"Mentally, we were afraid of making errors and afraid of doing anything other than our one best shot. We've committed to working on different shots for each player and really getting comfortable having a number of different swings and being able to make an error and bouncing back from it.

"I don't know that we've fixed it, but we've definitely addressed it. We'll be better, but our hitters still need to have the mentality that they're going to do whatever it takes to put the ball away and put themselves in the best position to score each time."

One thing that will aid Montana will be having more weapons on the outside. Last year's leading producer of kills -- Alexis Urbach -- is out with an injury, but that still leaves returners Mykaela Hammer, Cassie Laramee and Missy Huddleston, plus new freshmen Brooke Foster and Maddy Marshall.

Hammer had 13 kills on .310 hitting in Friday's scrimmage. Foster and Marshall combined for 19 kills over four sets.

Three things to know about Prairie View A&M:

1. The Lady Panthers (of Prairie View, Texas) went 10-19 a year ago (and according to their website are preparing to play Montana State on Friday. Won't they be in for a surprise.). A&M finished sixth in the Southwestern Athletic Conference last season at 9-9.

2. The Lady Panthers are coached by TaCho Tyler, who was inducted into the Prairie View A&M Sports Hall of Fame in 2015 based on her success as a player at her alma mater. Entering her third year, she has a career record of 19-44.

3. The Lady Panthers were picked sixth out to 10 teams in the preseason SWAC poll, which was topped by Alabama State. Junior middle blocker Calli-Jordan Hensch and junior defensive specialist Christen Augustine both were named preseason second-team All-SWAC.

History: Friday will be the teams' first meeting.

Three things to know about Tulsa:

1. The Golden Hurricane went 19-13 last year, finishing seventh in the American Athletic Conference with an 8-12 league record. Tulsa returned just two starters from that team and added seven newcomers.

2. The Golden Hurricane are coached by Ryan Wills, who is in his fourth year. He has a record of 56-39.

3. Tulsa was picked ninth in the 12-team AAC preseason poll. Wichita State and Cincinnati claimed the poll's first-place votes.

History: Montana leads the series 1-0, taking a 15-7, 15-8, 15-6 decision in 1994 at Southwest Missouri State's tournament, part of the Grizzlies' 7-0 start that season. One of those wins was 3-0 over Kansas, a team Montana will face next week. These Jayhawks have a No. 8 preseason national ranking.

Three things to know about North Texas:

1. The Mean Green, which returned four starters and nine letterwinners, went 13-19 last season, finishing seventh in Conference USA at 7-7.

2. North Texas is coached by Andrew Palileo, who was the head coach at Washington State from 2008-10 and the Pac-12 Coach of the Year in 2009. His associate head coach is Vinh Nguyen, his assistant coach is Carnae Dillard in a traditional staff setup that will be analyzed on GoGriz.com later this week.

3. The Mean Green were picked to finish sixth out of 13 teams in the Conference USA preseason poll. Senior middle blockers Amanda Chamberlain and Holly Milam were named to the preseason all-conference team.

Around the Big Sky Conference:

* The Big Sky schedule starts this week for all 12 teams. Only two, Northern Colorado and Montana State, open at home. The Bears host Central Florida and Duke in Greeley. The Bobcats will welcome Air Force, Illinois¹ and Gonzaga to Bozeman.

1: Illinois will be under new coach Chris Tamas. He replaced Kevin Hambly, who took over one of the nation's most coveted jobs: Stanford. The Cardinal won last year's national championship, which led John Dunning to the decision that that was a pretty nice time to retire.

* Big Sky preseason favorite North Dakota will head south to inflict damage on the preseason hopes of teams representing Chattanooga, Mississippi, Louisiana Tech and Florida A&M at Ole Miss's tournament, then pick up a match at Georgia Tech on Sunday on its way back to Grand Forks.

* Matchup of the week: On Saturday Northern Arizona will face Western Kentucky at Miami (Ohio). The Hilltoppers are one of the top mid-major programs in the nation, ending last season with a record of 30-3 and an RPI of 16th. The Lumberjacks won't be fazed.

* On Tuesday, one of the Big Sky's top teams -- Northern Colorado -- will play at one of the Mountain West's top teams -- Colorado State. Hunch: UNC coach Lindsey Oates would love to one day move from Greeley to Fort Collins and replace longtime Rams coach Tom Hilbert.

She has the resume for it but didn't sprout from Hilbert's extensive coaching tree, which might be an issue.

Upcoming: Montana will play three matches in three days next week at Utah Valley, facing Long Beach State on Thursday, the Wolverines on Friday and Kansas on Saturday. The Beach won 21 matches last season, the Jayhawks went 27-3. Tough field.