Sluggish Start Proves Costly

A few games into the second half of the Lady Vikes conference schedule, BBCC has been trying to implement what they learned in the first half regarding how to approach their opponents. Understanding their plan of attack, it simply came down to their ability to execute versus Yakima Valley Community College on Wednesday October 11th at the Devries Activity Center. 

Set one did not go according to plan for the Lady Vikes as they came out sluggish offensively resulting in BBCC being on their heels early and dropping the first set by a score of 25-13. Head Coach Alexa Moser had this to say regarding the slow start "We have been focusing a lot on serve receive in practice this week and our biggest goal going into the night on our side was to get in system so we could be running our middles in our offense and we had moments of that but just not consistently enough and not until after the first set. On the other side of the net, the game plan was to shut down their outside and we definitely did not execute that, we let her get kill after kill and that was frustrating to watch. We knew she is their go to hitter and when you can't shut her down, it's hard to stay up on our side. We had so many moments of good things still despite the outcome, but the biggest goal moving forward is being able to have good moments more often and from the start of point 1 in set 1, not taking a full set and a half to start competing. "

As Moser stated, they need to be ready to go point one, in set one. After a slow start the Lady Vikes managed to turn it on and go punch for punch with the high powered Yakima Valley offense. Unfortunately, BBCC ended up on the losing end of sets two and three by scores of 25-20 and 25-22. Audrey Wellhausen and Dakota Killian ignited the Viking offense with 5 kills a piece while Laura Forsgren was the defensive stand out with 18 digs. 

BBCC's Alexa Moser recaped the match by stating "We really turned things around in the second set and started competing with Yakima. We finally started putting the pressure on them, finding open spots the court and focused on earning our points. Our biggest enemy is still ourselves and we're letting them score the first 5 points of the set and when you lose by 5 that's very frustrating. The girls do such a great job of competing and fighting at the end of the set but that needs to happen from point 1, instead of having to play behind and trying to dig ourselves out of the hole that we create at the beginning of the set. Set 3 we started a lot better, but let them go on a run at the end of that set and same thing, hard to try and compete when you're always playing from 3-4 points behind. The biggest takeaway is that we need to find a way to be more consistent. Work on trading points back and forth instead of scoring 1-2 points and then letting them go on runs of 4 and 5 and then keeping the momentum on our side of the court."

Although another tough loss to their record, BBCC has a quick turn around as they hit the road on Friday October 13th to battle it out against the Walla Walla Warriors at 6:00pm. 

As always, keep up with the Lady Vikings on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, as well as through the NWACSports Network's livestream video platform, where available.