Idaho hopes tough schedule pays off
Some 0-8 starts are better than others.
While University of Idaho volleyball coach Debbie Buchanan isn’t particularly happy with her Vandals being winless eight matches and three weeks into the 2006 season, she is not ready to give up on her young team.
“Our team is in a different situation that it’s been in in the past,” Buchanan said, pointing out that UI’s roster features the names of four sophomores and seven freshmen. “There’s not a lot of experience among those younger kids.
“We’re just learning some things right now. We make young mistakes at times, but we’ve gotten better. We’ve gotten a lot better.”
The Vandals will try to take that next step today, when they travel to Washington State to take on the hard-charging Cougars (11-1) in the first of back-to-back matches between the neighboring interstate rivals, who will meet again on Friday at Idaho.
WSU has won eight straight matches to build its longest winning streak since 2002, when it advanced to the Elite Eight of the NCAA tournament.
“They’re doing a lot of good things,” Buchanan said of the Cougars, whose only loss came to South Dakota State. “They run a pretty fast offense to the outside, and they’re playing consistently right now.
“I don’t think their strength of schedule has been as tough as ours, though, so it’s kind of hard to say how we stack up.”
Idaho, which opens Western Athletic Conference play at New Mexico State Sept. 21, has played three top-25 teams – Missouri, Notre Dame and Long Beach State – and Buchanan is hoping to reap some benefits from the tough non-conference schedule.
“I want our program to be a top-25 program,” she said, “and I think our kids need to understand what that means. By playing these tough teams, we can tell them, ‘That’s what we want to be like, and that’s what it’s going to take get there.’ “
“Yeah, everybody wants to have a winning record, and right now I definitely don’t want to be 0-8. But with where we’re at and where we want our program to be, I think the (tough) schedule makes sense.
“It can’t hurt us. But we definitely need to put some things together and start winning some matches.”
Schedule quirk
The upcoming back-to-back matches between Palouse rivals Idaho and WSU are the result of a scheduling conflict that prevented the Vandals from staging the four-team tournament they had hoped to put up this week.
According to Buchanan, UI, WSU and Oregon State had agreed to take part in the event, but before a fourth team could be found, OSU opted out because of a scheduling conflict.
“So we just decided to stay home and play each other,” Buchanan said. “I don’t think there’s a problem with it. It’s going to be great for us to be able to be at home, be able to compete and be able to keep working on the things we need to do.”
Quick sets
Heading into Tuesday night’s non-conference match at Gonzaga, Eastern Washington had won seven of the eight road matches it played during the first 11 days of the season. In addition, the Eagles had won five straight by 3-0 scores, giving them a 15-game winning streak. … The going doesn’t get any easier for GU, which travels to Boise, where the Bulldogs open play in the Boise State Tournament on Friday against an Oregon team that is 7-0. … Whitworth College will take a 1-9 record and nine-match losing streak into Friday’s Northwest Conference opener against Linfield in McMinnville, Ore. … Next up for WSU following this week’s matches against Idaho is another difficult Pacific-10 Conference schedule, which kicks off next week with home matches against seventh-ranked Stanford (6-1) on Sept. 21 and 10th-ranked California (9-0) on Sept. 22.