The past two nights, teams have not been able to master its serves. In both contests UNM has played in, the Lobos and opponents have combined for 42 service errors, 21 each night.
New Mexico (6-2) would eventually find its groove and complete a 3-0 sweep over Montreal in an exhibition match on Saturday night.
The first set was a grueling one. Neither UNM nor Montreal was able to become comfortable in the serving game, as the Lobos collected five of its seven total service errors in set one, and Montreal seven of its 14.
UNM Head coach Jeff Nelson said he wasn’t that concerned with the start of the volley, but was unenthused with how his squad played once the ball was in play.
“I didn’t feel like we were being aggressive enough. I didn’t even care about the errors,” Nelson said. “I just wanted us to be more aggressive and I thought we did a better job in (sets) two and three in that.”
However, Warren said the ball comes off of the hand a bit differently in the court deep underground.
“It’s an adjustment for teams coming in the Pit,” she said. “The ball moves more down on the floor.”
Warren was coming off of a game in which she reached a career mark of 1,000 digs. None of her digs counted Saturday night with the game being an exhibition, but still ended her night with four digs to match four kills.
The Lobos have an unblemished record so far in the tournament, but will face a major test in No. 1 Nebraska on Saturday.
“We’re going to take it every point. We’re just going to look at every point like let’s get the next point,” Nelson said of Nebraska. “Our goal is to stress them and see what happens.”
Warren said having a full day to think about the contest against the top ranked team in the country won’t be problematic, but rather beneficial for her squad.
“We have a day to rest tomorrow, get some rest, get some food and come in here ready to battle,” Warren said. “We want to put on a really good game for our crowd and we have some things that we can talk about tonight and get ready for tomorrow, but other than that we’re just ready to play hard.”
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Nelson said his group is going to take the match as a learning experience to get better, regardless of the result. Nebraska (5-0) has only dropped one set all season.
A big reason why? Having three All-Americans on its roster.
“I’m not thinking about winning. Of course you always think you can win, and of course you always want to win,” Nelson said. “We didn’t schedule this match thinking ‘Oh, we’re going to win this match.’ We scheduled this match thinking, ‘it’s going to teach our kids to be tougher, to play tough, and we’re going to see what happens.’”
First serve against Nebraska is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. at WisePies Arena.
Liam Cary-Eaves is the sports editor for the Daily Lobo. He primarily covers volleyball, women’s basketball and baseball. He can be reached at sports@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @Liam_CE.
