Or Who? No, Oru Spikes Polls

And you thought college football’s poll system needed reform.

What, then, do we make of the Miss America pageant that is college volleyball? And how do we account for Oral Roberts University?

Unranked and unsung Oral Roberts. Unloved, unrepentant - oops, sorry, Oral - and most of all undaunted ORU.

Bully for volleyball, though, that the slighted can play their way out of poll purgatory, which is exactly what the Golden Eagles are doing in the ongoing NCAA Tournament. On Sunday, they did it in three straight, stunning games at the expense of 11th-ranked Washington State.

Unfulfilled, inconsolable Washington State.

It was quite the fairy tale season that came crashing down on the Cougars Sunday. With a roster of frisky teenagers - only three had turned 20 before classes began - Wazzu had climbed as high as fifth in the polls, finished an unprecedented second in the Pac-10 and galvanized a loyal fan following among the nation’s largest and most vocal.

In time, just wait ‘til next year will sound pretty good.

“But right now,” said coach Cindy Fredrick, “we don’t care.”

True enough. But during a couple of mighty momentum swings against ORU, the Cougs could have been excused for thinking it.

In games one and three, Wazzu built leads of 13-6 and 9-5 - then went into a death spiral nudged along by ORU’s single-minded refusal to let a ball hit the floor and the bullet-train serves and spikes of Zvjezdana Sirola.

Sheera to her friends. Sheera terror to opponents.

So what in the first 15 minutes looked like Kentucky-Mt. St. Mary’s or another of those March Madness 1-vs.-16s became a 16-14, 15-6, 15-10 sweep - over in less time than it takes to drive here from Spokane. Indeed, the Golden Eagles had struggled harder to beat No. 20 Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles in a first-round match Wednesday.

Which begs the question: why aren’t these women ranked?

“Because you’re looking at politics,” offered Fredrick. “Maybe coaches don’t know that coach or who that school is. That’s a lot of the way the voting goes.”

She knows. Just as Wazzu is always being picked to finish seventh in the Pac10, because it’s Wazzu.

Then again, it’s a good thing ORU coach Revis Ward didn’t have a vote. The Golden Eagles are now 29-2, but played just one ranked team - Idaho back in September, falling in four games.

“That was our one shot to crack into the top 25 - you’ve got to play top-25 teams,” she said. “The truth is, I didn’t know how strong we were going to be. You look at our lineup and we have a 5-foot-8 hitter, a 5-9 hitter, a 5-10 middle blocker.

“I didn’t try to schedule a lot of top-20 teams because I didn’t think we were top-20 material - until the preseason, and then it was too late.”

As unimposing as they look, the Golden Eagles stand tall in another area: experience. Four of the seven players who broke a sweat Sunday are 23 or older. Four are in their first year of collegiate volleyball, having been recruited straight out of the Brazilian club system. Two others - Sirola and 6-foot-2 Ksenija Kugler - are teammates on the Croatian National Team.

“They’ve played in big matches,” agreed Ward. “They are older players. Fredrick had brought that up, that 24- and 25-year-olds playing against 18- and 19-year-olds makes a big difference, and it does.

“Once we came back from a 12-5 deficit, the mental edge had been gained. Because they’re a young team, it’s hard for them to regain their composure.”

The Cougars tried after swooning in game two, taking charge again in the third - albeit temporarily - before fading again. That may have been Wazzu’s season in microcosm: the fantastic 17-1 start, the not-so-fantastic 5-6 finish, though to be fair, four of those losses were to ranked teams.

“We had a problem putting games away,” said Sarah Silvernail, the Cougars’ middle blocker. “Stanford puts games away. Hopefully, we’ll learn from this and have the experience to do that next year.”

Any other wishes?

“My goal next year,” said Fredrick, “is to maybe not have to play a team that’s somebody’s national team. Like last year, we played Australia’s national team (New Mexico, whose stars came from Down Under). This year we had Brazil and Croatia’s national teams.

“Either that, or I’m going to have to bag recruiting in the states and go to Brazil.”

Well, this is not age-group volleyball, is it? And it’s not as if the Cougars haven’t received some impressive contributions from an import of their own, Keren Oigman from Israel.

“There was a point in time when I started to feel uncomfortable about (foreign recruiting),” said Ward. “But every coach in the country has the same opportunity I have to recruit. I’ve chosen to go internationally and my adminstration has allowed me to for the very reason is that’s what ORU is all about we have students from 44 countries on our campus. We will always be different.”

No kidding. Three years ago, at the end of her second season as a coach, Ward had a record of 5-57. Now they’re in volleyball’s Sweet 16 against Notre Dame.

“We have nothing to lose,” said Ward, “and people are running scared.”

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Blanchette The Spokesman-Review