BUCS Championships

hi folks,

just to let you know that the women's team came 7th at the BUCS championships. Match of the weekend was the last, where all players fought hard for a victory. Kudos and commiserations go to Hannah, who played a set with what turned out to be a broken knuckle (finger?).

Paul

wow, bubbly and made of steel, what a combo. Well done ladies on making it to the finals. What were the other results the summary on the bucs website is fairly poor.

bram

Women's finals saw Bath (lots of GB beach players, including one who was big and slightly scary) against Dundee. Dundee had one middle who was really really tall and willowy. Terrible action, but she could put the ball down. Anyway, Bath won it (in 2?) but Dundee put up a good fight. Bath had their big hitter going through opposite, but had an outside (Marina?) who was beach-smart, lots of clever shots.

Manchester came third, beating a Durham team which was technically pretty bad, but fought ferociously for every point. I have to give kudos to Durham, they were all pretty short, with very little attacking power, but they had excellent fighting spirit. I think they took it to a third set but I could be wrong.

In general, the standard of the women's teams was very low. The final was entertaining, but no player on either side could consistently hit line, for example, and only one could jump serve effectively. When Leeds Met women play in div 1 next year, they'll be favourites to win.

Men's finals saw Leeds Met absolutely destroy Hallam. Hallam had a lot of GB players out due to national team commitments, and in particular their new setter was really really bad. All sets to the outside were almost at the 3m line. Atrocious. Leeds were pretty short, but were really well-drilled, and had some serious jumping ability. The first set was tight, but in the second Leeds pasted Hallam. Leeds Met players are all pretty young, and they have some good prospects coming in next year. If Hallam can field a stronger team next year, there should be good some competition next year. Encouragingly, Leeds brought some supporters to the tournament. Having said that, Oxford had a vocal presence out of all proportion to their numbers! (the 'smart play' chant was a crowd favourite, as was 'uuuuused and abuuuused' and 'hit the line Jack'. 'Hallam needs a new setter' was not wheeled out, however.)

For third place, it was Loughborough v Cambridge. Cambridge put on their entire bench (including a new setter), so it was pretty one-sided. If Cambridge had put on their starting six, they would probably have won it. Even with the bench, they got 15 points or so per set, and made Loughborough look silly at times. Rob Flay was setting for Lough, and in certain matches was absolutely outstanding. Had a knuckle set from one antenna to the other, which his outside buried in the net. Also got away with a tip-set (setting middle with just prodded fingers).

The Cambridge/Hallam semi was very tight, and Hallam looked vulnerable at times. However, in the third set a woman in the crowd had some sort of seizure next to the Cambridge bench. This seemed to completely distract the Cambridge team, who lost 3 points in a row, and the match. I'm not sure what happened to the poor lady. The Leeds/Loughborough match was disappointing, with the opposite from Loughborough having an awful game. Loughborough were pretty much annihilated.

hmmmm, were you watching the right tournament paul?

Manchester beat Napier, who as you say did fight for every point (and also had a tall player who was by far their strongest attacking option - hence they set her 3/4 of the time).
Durham actually came 5th, after beating Imperial in 3 sets (recovering from 1-0 down) - a very admirable feat given that everyone had written off Durham at the start of the tournament since they had the weakest squad and didn't even have a coach... but they still managed to beat Imperial who had two coaches and a squad big enough to "rest"/rotate players in the earlier matches.

re: the Cam/Luf match - the lady in the crowd had an epilectic fit (triggered by the noise i would guess), but the BUCS medic was on the scene pretty quickly and an ambulance arrived about 3 minutes later, and she seemed to be ok afterwards.

Like you say, I expect Cam would have beaten Luf with their first team, and it could have been very different if they hadn't had an extremely bad call go against them in their third set against Leeds Met in the group stage.

The final positions were:
Women:
Bath - Dundee - Manchester - Napier - Durham - Imperial - Oxford - Birmingham
Men:
Leeds - Hallam - Loughborough - Cambridge - Ulster - Edinburgh - (Kent/Southampton ?)

I grovel. What happened re the bad call against Cambridge in the group stage? Don't remember it. Reffing fun that I do remember: I managed to get a ref to give me a third time-out :-) I felt kinda bad afterwards, since he got heavily teased by the other refs. Also, in one of the semis a player made a back-court attack where his foot was clearly on the line. The second ref didn't whistle, but did indicate to the first ref, who saw the second ref but ignored him. However, the second ref now has the right to whistle for those calls ...
In general, the reffing standard was pretty high. I didn't see many calls that were game-killers.

Thanks for the reports! I hear the girls had a good weekend, although not playing to their full potential. Having fun is most important. I think it's already really good that they made the finals, coming third in the pool and with numbers 1 and 2 not even qualifying for the finals. I'm looking forward to the alumni matches, although I probably won't be able to play myself...

ah you were taught well young grass hopper. Sounds like a lot of fun though with the battle of the benches for many teams even when the standard was a bit lower than we were used to before. But i am guessing a lot of teams are refreshing at the moment. Although i cant believe FLay is still a student. Why did Cambridge play the bench in the playoff, that sounds very unlike Jean?

I'm not sure why Jean played the bench, it was something of a disappointment. Possible reasons:
1. the first team were so cheesed off with losing the semi that they chose to offer a walkover (with respect to the Cambridge bench, who played really well).
2. the bench got very little court time all season, and this was their reward. He did bring in one or two of his big hitters in the second set, but Johnie (setter) stayed on the bench. The bench setter got a bit stressed, and was called for a few double-touches.
3. he felt that if he played the first string, he could easily win (which I think was the case - Loughborough didn't really have much presence except for Flay. Coops was there, but didn't have a great tournament, and the opposite (big balding guy) wasn't playing well) so why bother ... ?

hello darksiders!

well done the girls for keeping the motivation up and winning your last game in sheffield. you know your eventual win : loss ratio was the same as ours! and thanks everyone for the support.

just by way of explanation, there are several reasons why i ran the bench i the final match but primarily it's to give the guys who had come all the way some court time. our team objective is to come in the top 4 as this means displacing one team which has a substantial volleyball programme (hallam, carnegie, bath or lough). we're hoping to make that the criteria for the awarding of full blues. if it's not a gold or silver medal, 3rd or 4th isn't critical. as it happens, loughborough were keeen to win as they seemed to think there might qualify for the european university championships. didn't speak to the finalists about this but maybe one or both of them can't it, bizzarely the EUC take place in late may this year. i don't think we can field a team at that time.

in fact this is not unlike me at all, i did exactly the same thing in 3rd/4th place match in 2006 v oxford no less. it's also with one eye into the future, one or two of the 'bench' might be starters next year, it's important that they get some experience of playing in those conditions.

just for the record the bad call in the leeds met game was by a some dopy bath newbie who could barely his job let alone judge the flight of a ball (he was standing behing the ref stand and couldn't even see the ball) but called a leeds line shot in that was clearly out, it landed right in front of me and i was looking down the line. annoyingly it had been very purposely left by our defence.

the worst two ref calls of the weekend against us came in our match v bath. fortunately we turned over the 8 point deficit it helped to create. tom lord hit a ball into the middle of the net and i mean 20cm below the tape into the blockers chest, but the ref seemed to think they could have another 3 touches and they eventually won the rally. martin got a yellow card because of his protests. the next point an attack by lord was blocked onto his head and out, the linesman and second ref both indicated this but first ref 'debbie' resolutely ignored them, thereby awarding 3 points incorrectly to bath. luckly martin then went on a 9-point service run which had bath wetting their pants...

the worst scorer errors came in our match against hallam, again luckily in a set that we won. the refs handled it very badly, they effectively let hallam win 3 points with the wrong server. oh, well nothing new there...

jean

oh yeah, i remember that business with the wrong server... Hallam asked for the server and they told them the wrong one, and then even when challenged they still got it wrong. only a couple of points later did they admit the mistake, and they still didn't replay the points (and carried on with a different server)... well done for winning the set anyway!

interesting comment about the win:loss ratio! the last two years at EVA the girls have suffered in the group stage when there was a three-way tie, although at BUCS it was simply the case that they didn't win any of their group games...

Just for the record, in 2006 we put on our entire bench too! It was just that we only had 2 or so people on our bench. I remember Cambridge were quite irked that our team hadn't changed much :-) (*cough* we won)