I'm no volleyball guru, but I've played some, and watched a lot of the BYU games when I was there.

After seeing the Texas match the other night, defending the middle attack off a quickset looked like the girls' biggest weakness. It really looked like we had no answer for it, so much so that I'm a bit amazed Texas seemed to go away from it when they needed it most. It just appeared that our blockers were not able to move laterally quickly enough to challenge it, or, I suppose it could have been a coaching/strategic decision to de-emphasize middle defense on the presumption that the majority of sets will go to the outside, and taking your lumps in the middle for a bang-for-your-buck outside defensive advantage - I don't really know.

I'm just curious how much advantage Penn State could take from it? I listened to the Holly Rowe interview that's posted below, and she made it sound like PSU has more balanced hitting from all spots than Texas did, but it also appears that the hitters Texas had we're stronger hitters, and our girls dug them okay, except on fast attacks in the middle. Does this mean we'll have a better shot of not letting that hurt us v Penn State? Is their having an all-world setter more a difference maker there than the raw hitting power?

Are we just going to have to have an otherworldly night hitting by Hamson and Grey, blocking by Boswell, and digs on the entire back row, or are there cracks in the Penn State armor our girls can exploit as well?