Sept. 4, 2007

Blazer fans,

Well, we beat Alabama last weekend! But then lost to Illinois State and Sacramento State, two very good teams, but teams I think we had a great chance of beating. It was still great beating Alabama on their home floor though.

Alabama is a very good win for us to pick up. They were an NCAA Tournament team last year and have all of their starters back from that team. I thought several seniors played outstanding against Alabama. Fernanda Domingos had a great match, as did Brianna Galvin. Angie Ping came off the bench for us and helped jump-start our comeback and Shaniquwa Cooper was strong as well, so it was good to see such great play from those four seniors.

This week, we travel out east to play in the Pittsburgh Invitational. We will play Buffalo and Pittsburgh on Friday. Pittsburgh will be a key match for us because they are usually a strong BIG EAST team so a win over them could help us in the long run as they pick up wins in BIG EAST play. Our last match of the weekend will be against George Mason of the Atlantic 10 Conference, which is another strong league.

Overall, I think we¹re doing a lot of things well, but we still need to improve on a lot of things as well. Our passing has to improve for our offense to work and we need to block much better. We also need to communicate better and there have been times where we have seemed to lack the emotion needed to beat top opponents.

The girls have the opportunity to make positive improvements this week in practice and in the three matches at Pittsburgh and I¹m confident that they will.

Wish us luck at Pitt!

Until next time,

Kerry Messersmith