The North Carolina volleyball team lost to Virginia Tech 3-1 Friday night in a match coach Joe Sagula believes was far from his team’s standard level of play.
“We went in not as energized and kind of flat,” he said. “The bottom line was that we scored the first (few) points of the game, then kind of relaxed a little bit, but then Virginia Tech was ready to start playing. ”
The Tar Heels (22-8, 14-5 ACC) came back in the second set and won 18-25, but heading into the third set, Virginia Tech’s strong defense was a force against UNC’s scoring.
“We were struggling on finding ways to score, that’s really what it came down to,” Sagula said. “Our serving was also not as tough as it normally is … Virginia Tech was able to run their offense really well, respectively.”
After the loss in Blacksburg, the Tar Heels had a team meeting Saturday morning and both coaches and players agreed that Friday’s performance was unlike the rest of the 2011 season.
“(I) thought the feeling that we played with and where we played in (the Virginia Tech game) was not characteristic of us this year,” Sagula said.
That refocusing helped the Tar Heels post a 3-1 win Saturday against the Cavaliers in Charlottesville, even against difficult odds on the court.
“There were things that we just needed to get through to play better against Virginia and I think the thing is that we came back committed and a lot more focused,” Sagula said.
“At the end of the first set, we were out of substitutions and we went through four rotations without any front row players in the game,” he said. “That was a remarkable way to win.”