Volleyball has a shot
The Coyotes will attempt to continue their radical volleyball turnaround today in Omaha with a shot at finishing 8-8 in the conference after being 3-8 at one point this season.
There is also an outside chance of getting into the Summit League postseason tournament.
With help of an interpretation from USD SID Jarrod Tell, if the Coyotes defeat Omaha today and Western Illinois defeats Oakland, USD would be in a four-way tie for the last spot in the tournament. They would win the tie-breaker by virtue of having a better record against the other teams in the tie.
Oakland is a pretty decent team, however (15-12, 8-7) and Western Illinois is not (11-16, 4-11), but Western Illinois defeated Oakland 3-2 the last time the two teams played.
Meanwhile, it looks like the Coyotes have a pretty good shot against Omaha, which is 1-14 in the conference.
Looked at the USD women’s box score. Nicole Seekamp had a great debut with 19 points and Polly Harrington looks like she’s going to get some things done underneath, which I perceived, being the basketball mind that I am, would be a problem this year. Maybe points in the paint won’t be the weakness that I thought it would be.
For the Coyotes to stay competitive in the conference, however, they’re going to have to get points from players other than Seekamp. They struggled on that count against Cleveland State with 12 points from people not named Seekamp or Harrington.
The three freshmen, Margaret McCloud, Heidi Hoff and Tia Hemiller, played a total of 27 minutes led by Hoff with 16.
My belief is that getting steady points out of Hoff as the season progresses will be a big part of the Coyotes’ success. She’s the one player who appears to have capacity to be a double-figure scorer on a nightly basis eventually.
