Iowa Volleyball Ends Season On High Note

By erut17 on November 30, 2022 at 10:00 am @erut17
go hawks go
@IowaVolleyball (Twitter)
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Iowa volleyball put together its best week of the season last week, notching a pair of conference wins, dashing Michigan's tournament hopes, and showcasing some of that potential I've been talking about all season. It was a tough season for the Hawkeyes overall, but given that it was their first under Coach Barnes and the Big Ten's perennial place atop the college volleyball hierarchy, there's a real case to be made that the season was a success.

Iowa's first match of the week took place on Wednesday when the Hawks hosted Michigan. The Wolverines were firmly on the bubble coming into the match and knew they had to take care of business against a struggling Hawkeye squad. Early on, it looked as if they would do just that, winning the first set 25-9 and the second 25-19. The same issues that plagued Iowa all year popped up again in the early sets. The Hawks struggled to get into their offense due to passing errors or hitting errors, and the struggling attack eventually allowed Michigan to wear the Hawkeyes down. 

I've tried to stress all year that even though the results haven't always matched, the team looks like it's improving. It's something I've noticed both in the play and in the culture around the team. These Hawks feel like they belong on the court with the rest of the Big Ten and the final three sets of Wednesday's match proved that. Instead of folding, the Hawkeyes bounced off the mat and punched back. They controlled the third set, shrugging off each Michigan attempt at a comeback, and won 25-18. The Wolverines looked a bit surprised at the Iowa fight for most of the set but came out ready to go for the fourth set. That set was a back-and-forth affair with the Wolverines desperately trying to avoid the winner-take-all fifth set and the Hawkeyes doing everything possible to play spoiler. Michigan got it to match point at 24-22, but the Hawkeyes rallied back with a 4-0 run to take the fourth set 26-24.

At this point, the Hawks had all the momentum and the desperation was clear from Michigan. Iowa went up 8-4 early in the 5th against a Michigan team that looked like they were pressing, feeling their postseason hopes slipping through their fingers. The Wolverines mustered one last push to tie the set at 13, but Iowa put them away with a 15-13 final set win, securing their best win of the season and dashing any hopes of a Michigan postseason bid.

The Hawks followed up their huge win with another five-set thriller on Saturday over Michigan State. Iowa came out swinging and took the first set, but MSU quickly recovered to take sets two and three. Again, the Hawks could have folded. Road match, end of the season, let-down after a big win, the explanations would have all been understandable. Instead, the Hawkeyes rallied yet again to take a thrilling fourth set, 25-23. Iowa refused to let the Spartans put together a big run and whenever the match looked to be getting away from them the Hawks found a way to side out and stop the bleeding. And once it got to crunch time, Iowa was cool, calm, and collected.

The fourth set win was great, but these Hawks knew the job wasn't finished. The fifth set started with the sides trading points until Iowa pulled ahead 9-7. A Spartan error and Hawkeye kill pushed the score to 11-8 and then Iowa put together a 4-1 run to take the set and the match 15-9.

I can only imagine the validation this team must feel after finally breaking through for a couple of conference wins. The team has scratched and clawed all season and even though the results didn't always match, you could tell this group was close to putting it together. Coach Barnes' offense wants to run through the middle hitters and that's only possible with strong passing on serve receive. If the passes are too far off the net, the middle set isn't an option and that makes Iowa far easier to defend. During Iowa's struggles, the offense looked choppy and inconsistent, but credit to both the players and coaches for staying committed to the plan. Barnes patiently tinkered with lineups (including finding a way to get the underclassmen more and more involved as the season continued) and the players didn't hang their heads if their roles shifted and instead worked diligently to improve their game. 

It's all just more proof that there's a really strong culture within this team. You see it in the players moving from position to position without complaint. You see it in the upperclassmen mentoring their peers during timeouts (many of those upperclassmen having lost playing time to those same peers), and you see it in the way this group fights back point-to-point, set-to-set, and match-to-match. I've watched my share of bad teams as a Chicago sports fan and played on my fair share growing up and it's easy to become complacent as the losses pile up, but this team never showed a hint of that. It didn't matter if they lost the prior set by one or twenty-one, they still had faith in themselves and their team. 

There's still clearly work to do. Even with the two wins to close the season, their record was still just 10-21 on the year and 4-16 in conference, but all of that work becomes so much easier when you start to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Two wins to close out the year, including one over a tournament-caliber team, is the perfect way to carry momentum into the offseason. If you squint, there's a successful season within that record for Coach Barnes and the Hawks. I'm continually growing more and more confident that it will be even easier to find in the coming years.

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Alex Padilla Enters Transfer Portal

go hawks go

The Aftermath: Nebraska

sigh