A nightmare scenario began to unfold in Las Cruces last weekend.
The Arizona Wildcats lost to UTEP in five games in Friday afternoon’s Springhill Suites Invitational opener, and had two more matches to prepare for — including a showdown against New Mexico State that very night.
That wasn’t all. The match against the Miners “started a half-hour later than it should have,” UA coach Dave Rubio said. “We didn’t walk out of the gym until 3:45. We get back in the hotel at 4, we got to turn right back around at 5 and go back to the gym and get ready for New Mexico State.”
Fatigue set in, and Wildcats found themselves down two sets to New Mexico State — and in danger of posting a losing record in their weekend slate of games.
Following the second set, Rubio rallied his team.
“My words to them in timeout was like, ‘Are we just going to let this and fall victim to how we feel right now?’” Rubio said. “We’re all exhausted physically and mentally and fatigue is showing out there. Are we just going to give in to it or are we going to just fight through it and just say we’re going to not let it be the reason why we end up losing?”
Thanks to a 30-kill performance from sophomore Jaelyn Hodge, the Wildcats won the next three sets to beat NMSU 14-25, 14-25, 27-25, 25-21, 15-12. The next day, they beat Northwestern in five sets to cap a 2-1 road trip.
“You never know how a young team is going to respond in those situations,” Rubio said. “Jaelyn Hodge stepped up and certainly (Kamaile Hiapo) and (Emery Herman) just refused to let us lose those matches.”
“I haven’t coached too many teams that would be able to do what they did. I think there’s a lot of things that shed some light for us in terms of the offense … Overall, I was happy with how tough we were when things got really hard for us.”
Arizona will now look ahead to another tough road trip. The Wildcats (5-1) will face No. 1 Texas (5-0) in a nationally-televised game Friday and Notre Dame (2-4) on Saturday in Austin, Texas.
“I think we’re all looking forward to this weekend,” Rubio said. “Texas is a team that can win the national championship legitimately and they went to the finals last year and return every single player. So I think that’s where we aspire to be and, you know, I’m looking forward to playing them.”
Rubio said that he’ll need some more stability in his lineup and wants to limit excessive substitutions this weekend. To beat the Longhorns and Fighting Irish, the Wildcats must utilize the middle of the court and get the ball to Arizona’s “bigs.”
“Offensively, we need to have more diversification within the offense right now,” Rubio said. “This last weekend, they were pretty nonexistent. We were pretty much dominated by the outside by the left, and we’re not going to get very far unless we diversify. Our services got to be a bit better … It’s going to be a work in progress for us in trying to get some of the bigs out there.”
Rubio said opposite hitter Puk Stubbe, for one, much “really get going” in Texas.
“I think anybody who watches our film says, ‘Arizona better start setting their middles a little bit more; it’s a little more offense from the pocket.’ So I think those are pretty obvious things,” he said.
