Rattlers drain Tar Heel emotion

High emotions had been a crucial element to the North Carolina volleyball team's five-game winning streak coming into Sunday's match against No. 25 Florida A&M.

But a FAMU team driven by international players sucked the energy out of the Tar Heels and routed UNC in three games.

"They're very professional, they're very businesslike, they get a kill, and they go back and do it again," said co-captain Molly Pyles. "We're a very emotional team, we've been an emotional team all year - that's the kind of game we like to play - and when we're taken out of that, it's hard for us to get back into rhythm."

The Tar Heels managed to hang with the Rattlers during game one. The teams traded points, including 15 ties, before UNC fell 30-23. But in game two, FAMU came out to a 9-2 lead, and UNC's lackluster play caught up with the team.

"All of the sudden you find yourself, you're losing points, and they're scoring points," said UNC coach Joe Sagula. "We didn't come off the bench ready to fight, fight, fight. It's very unique from anybody else we've played all year."

That uniqueness stems from a Rattler roster that has all but one player coming from outside the United States. FAMU, which extended its winning streak to nine Sunday, fields players from Peru, Bulgaria, Germany and Serbia.

FAMU coach Tanio Trifonov said his team played its best game of the season Sunday and its serving kept the Tar Heels down.

"We're trying to play a little bit more combinations," Trifonov said. "But I think our service is ... over the top and taking teams out of their offense, and our goal is always to serve agressively."

Foreign players tend to have more experience than players from the United States, and the Rattlers showed that by never losing their composure, even when the Tar Heels tried to regain control.

"An experienced team just has so many more shots, different angles," Sagula said. "They hit at extreme angles and found openings in the court that a lot of younger players don't normally do. We weren't used to seeing a lot of that."

Contrarily, UNC's only international player is senior setter Norma Cortez, who, like five FAMU players, is from Lima, Peru.

Sagula took advantage of Cortez's experience, and she stayed on the floor for the majority of the match.

"The plan was going to be to play her," Sagula said. "We weren't using our middles very well early, and so I thought that she came in, and she used our middles well, and we went with that."

Co-captain Katie Wright said that UNC knew the Rattlers would have a less-energized style of play and practiced accordingly but that the team did not execute properly.

"Our plan going into it was to keep things going on our side, play our game, keep things the way we do it," Wright said. "Just to be very straightforward. We did not do that."

Even though the Tar Heels did not play as well as they had hoped, the matchup showed them what to expect in upcoming conference games against Florida State and Miami, who also field more foreign players than other ACC schools.

"We'll learn not to make these kind of mistakes in playing this caliber of teams," Sagula said. "We'll have to meet new challenges for those teams as well, but it'll help us. It can do nothing but help us at this point."

Contact the Sports Editor at sports@unc.edu.