 Welcome to the Aldis Bersen show presented by Buffalo Wildwings. I'm Sam Murray joined now with Stevenson Men's volleyball head coach Aldis Bersen and coach two weeks into the season. You guys opened the the season in California at the slug slam. And then last week played two top ranked teams in Marymount and SUNY New Pulse. How would you rank your teams played thus far? As expected I knew it would be tough playing the California teams and Marymount and New Pulse. New Pulse was ranked three and we took them to five. So I'm okay where we are. I mean we took two of the matches and lost four. But the way I look at it is those out of conference matches are really tough. And that if we happen to win our our conference we're going to have this kind of tough matches. So it's really good practice playing the best teams. Yeah I'm playing the best teams you have some freshmen who are starting for you. And so I think that's kind of a good good step for them. Nate Reynolds, Logan Smiley. Alex. Alex Smiley sorry. No no no Alex Melbardis. But Logan Smiley got you some some kills some offensive swings there. Talk about their play. Yeah I'd say I have you know I lost five seniors. I had five freshmen coming in. And they were just tossed into the fire so to speak against the best competition. So Logan he's kind of in a vulnerable position having to pass and hit opposite Landon who's very experienced. But Landon's been giving him some pointers and Logan's been hanging. And Alex sets at times you know we're still like in football I like to have a one quarterback. Right now I have two with Jared my junior setter and Alex is a freshman setter. And then I have Nate Reynolds who's a local Baltimore boy who's just become a monster at the net. Middle blocking that's a position we've had some injuries. And so he's stepped right in there and is playing at a really nice level. As a matter of fact he made the all tournament team at the Slug Slam. And then we also also Garrett opposite play has started some and played some. And Andrew DeCat from Massachusetts he's been in some so young team. What do you tell your team to after these tough matches especially against these ranked teams. I know the New Paul's game you win the first two sets and eventually fall in five. How do you keep keep their heads up. Yeah right. I'd say I practice yesterday. They were all a little down because there are expectations that it's hard for them to look long term. They want to win right now and conquer everything and which is good. You know I like the enthusiasm but with that comes you know kind of the downs where you know they're you know we have lost our last four matches but you know they've been against really good teams. And we've taken sets so I reminded I remind them like I've been talking here that we have two goals and you know one is to win our this new Mac conference and get the automatic bid to the NCAA's. And then with that automatic bid I don't want to be trounced right away you know in the NCAA's I want them to see the level of that out of conference competition. And so that's the way I'm looking at we're hoping to be above 500 out of conference and right now we're whatever two and four we need a couple more wins even that one up. And we haven't started conference play yet so there's a lot of and I see them playing better in practice. So that's what I look at is that day-to-day are they getting better. Yeah well you guys have an off weekend this weekend so next week we'll talk about that that Wilkes match up to start conference play. Alright we'll see you back here next week. Thanks Sam. For Coach Aldis Bursons I'm Sam Murray and this has been the Aldis Bursons Show.