 Welcome to Go Mustang Sports. I am Dave McHugh, joined by women's volleyball coach Dave Trumbo and after relatively successful week of games, five games down, five wins with only a set dropped. I know you're looking for this team to continue in sync and to continue playing well despite the set drop, which we'll get to in a minute, a good week especially because you secured home court advantage in the conference championships. That was big, you know, to secure home court advantage so we know that in the MAC tournament, the Commonwealth division, we're going to host as long as we keep winning. Struggled a little bit this week, a lot of close games against teams that we probably weren't, shouldn't have been that close to and then dropped a set to hood, which actually prompted a team meeting that I did not call. Another of my captains called, on Monday we didn't have practice and so they decided they had a team meeting and it wasn't that we don't have drama on our team, but we're not playing as well as we could right now. And so that's what we were talking about, the level, yes and we got to ramp them up and the level of play is not acceptable. And you say close games, despite winning 3-0, the sets are close. The teams are, we're not playing extremely well. The teams that we're playing are really fired up. Sure. A lot of times it's on their home court and we kind of got that feeling last night because we hosted Arcadia. It was senior night. It was only the second time all year we'd been home during the week. And there was a lot of electricity in there. The kids came out and they played fantastic. Arcadia is another one of those teams that we shouldn't have problems with. You got big turkey on that. Yeah, we could have had problems. We didn't last night. We played really well. Everybody got a chance to play. Everybody chipped in and did their job. Team meetings seemed to have worked because we're going to need everybody pulling in the same direction this weekend. This team has not lost a game in conference. It is preeminently a team everyone's looking at. Despite what regional rankings or NCA tournament results have shown, you're that team that everybody wants to be when you face them. That's got to be a major factor. Everybody's bringing their A-game. Absolutely. Everybody wants to be the first one to beat us. We really don't even talk about the fact that we are undefeated and we've never lost a match. But everybody else knows that. But everybody else knows that because it's set over and over again, 22 straight or whatever it is. We don't even discuss that. We have one more conference match coming up next Tuesday against Alvernia and then we've got the tournament. Last night, Messiah lost to Lebanon Valley. So Messiah will be the three seed, Lebanon Valley will be the two seed, will be the one seed. It's between Widener and Lycoming for the four or five playing game and that's who we'll get in the semifinals. Interestingly enough, you beat Winder, Hood, Lycoming and Arcadia in four games in essentially three match days to wrap up that number one. Now you're going to jump into non-conference action here for a little bit. You do have one more conference game to play. But Friday and Saturday, big games coming up. Regional rankings have now come out. You now understand where you sit. You're sitting five in a very difficult region. You've got Christopher Newport at one. You've got Eastern at two followed by Juniana and then Carnegie Mellon. You're going to see two, three and four this weekend. This is a huge weekend for you guys. Yeah, it has nothing to do with our conference as you said. But if we can win a couple of these matches, one, if we win our conference tournament, it helps our regional, it'll help our NCAA seed. Right. You're in, but it'll help your positioning. Right. If we should happen to lose our conference tournament and we win a couple matches this weekend. It'll help. It'll help us get that at large. So it is a huge weekend. The kids are so excited because for once, we're not the hunted. You're the hunting. Yeah, we're the hunting. And so it's going to be a lot more, and the quality of volleyball will be fantastic. So they are really looking forward to it. So one game on Friday, then two games on Saturday. A little odd that as an away team, you're going to be having a gap there on Saturday. But you played a bunch of try matches and even a quad match here at Stevenson. You're used to that gap. Right. And we'll be rested. And usually a lot of times you'll have two games on Friday, two games on Saturday. Well, you have four quality teams and they're all at that same site. These games are not going to be three-nothing. No. So teams are going to be exhausted. So they can't play back-to-back. So that's one of the reasons why they're all split off. Well, the coaching staff is going to be exhausted too from all the scouting. You're not leaving the bleachers the entire weekend, I suspect. No, well, we've got tape on all three of the teams. We've already played Eastern. But Juniata and Carnegie Mellon. And in the rankings, you're sitting five. Milberg's sitting six. Messiah for now sitting seventh, which is great for the conference, obviously, but Milberg's looming on the horizon. We don't need to look that far down the road, but this is an important 10 days coming up. It really is. To finish strong, to mentally be ready to win our conference tournament. No matter what happens over the next couple of days, that conference tournament is the key. Sure. This is all preparation, that if we do win that conference tournament, get the NCAAs, we're going to face teams like we do this weekend. So it's not like, oh, we've never seen this level of play before. We know what we have to do to be able to win. And these, probably, one of these four teams is going to be in the finals. Maybe we're going to be the other. Looking senior night against Arcadia was on Wednesday night. This is important because you have two seniors who've really been the foundation of this program, especially where it has come and where it had come from. Meg Miller and Sammy Perello. Well, that's perfectly put. I mean, when Sammy and Meg came, we were good. They put us over the hump. Sammy, of course, has the dig record. And her serve receives even better than her digging. I mean, how well she can pass has made such a huge difference in our team. They, together now, are 126 and 13. It's impressive. Sammy is by far the best libero we've ever had at Stevenson. Meg is the best middle. She just won that conference player of the week. So she has started to hit her stride like she a lot of times does at the NSEs. And last year, when she hit mid 300s against Juniata, and I think it was 386, she hit against Juniata in that second round game, the NCAAs. And so she is starting to play like that Meg Miller. And so watch out because she is starting to ramp it up. And these two players have rubbed off so well. You have underclassmen who have stepped up. And from what I've seen at games, it seems to be Meg and Sammy, obviously leading the way. But their confidence really rubs off on the underclassmen. Oh, there's no question. We are very young. But Sammy will just a lot, you know, sometimes, especially with freshman, they make a couple of mistakes kind of start moving away from everybody. Sammy will not let that happen. You get in here, you know, because in volleyball, after every point, they're going to get a little huddle and then you're back out. And so she will not let that happen. And you are absolutely right. Your observation is, you know, they instill confidence in the rest of the kids. So they don't expect to lose. Sammy and Meg don't expect to lose. And that goes a long way towards winning. You have these two and a half essential weeks left to the regular season plus conference action. I know for those two, these two and a half weeks are important. They want to get back to the NCAA tournament for a fourth time. They want to make an even bigger dent than last year, which was an impressive dent in itself, getting to the third round. Is there an element, though, of having to say the two of them, okay, pace yourself a little bit, or is it just you do what you need to do? I don't think so at this point that I'm trying to pace. Then we took the Monday off that we mentioned. We're going to take a Wednesday off next week. And then that's the last day off. Then we're going for it. We'll go in. We'll play Muhlenberg and Lynchburg at home. We'll play and then we'll have the conference tournament. NCAA, the filing week. If not NCAA, it would be ECAC, I'm sure. We may even host. I hope we own. We're in the NCAA. But we're going to be in postseason one way or the other because that's the expectation. They know that week's coming. No, I don't think so. Sammy's gotten a couple of good doctor's reports. She's had some elbow nerve problems. She's feeling a little bit better, but it makes playing a little bit better. So I think we're hitting our stride. Well, it's certainly impressive to watch this team playing above expectations to some extent. As they head into a big weekend against regional powers here. You can follow it all online at gomustangsports.com even links to watch those games if you'd like. Of course, team will be back in action here at Holman on November 1st. But we'll have a lot of action between now and then and we'll catch up with Coach Dave Trumbo next week. This is for Coach Dave Trumbo. I'm Dave McHugh.