The Daily Tar Heel
Printing news. Raising hell. Since 1893.
Thursday, March 28, 2024 Newsletters Latest print issue

We keep you informed.

Help us keep going. Donate Today.
The Daily Tar Heel

Errors lead to volleyball team's ?rst loss

As of Friday afternoon, Joe Sagula’s team had won 15 games in a row.

The North Carolina volleyball team was perfect in ACC play with a 4-0 start to conference competition and hadn’t lost a home game since October of 2011.

A record-high crowd flooded Carmichael Arena, eager to watch the Tar Heels take on Duke, and with an unprecedented 15-0 start to the season, Sagula had every reason to feel confident in his No. 10-ranked team’s ability to defeat the unranked Blue Devils.

That all changed an hour and 24 minutes later.

With the first loss of the season — a 3-0 sweep at the hands of the Blue Devils — that optimism was nowhere to be found.

“They outplayed us, they out blocked us, they out dug us,” Sagula said. “They out hit us, they out served us, they out passed us.”

There was one statistic in which the UNC very obviously outdid Duke — errors.

“We had 28 hitting errors,” Sagula said, letting out a quiet sigh. “We hit .093 (percent) — pretty uncharacteristic of us.”

Those 28 hitting errors were exactly double Duke’s 14, but the .093 hitting percentage wasn’t even half of Duke’s .206. UNC tallied eight service errors, one more than Duke.

“Where to start? We tried everything,” sophomore middle blocker Paige Neuenfeldt said. “We tried switching things around and we just couldn’t find a groove.”

Sagula’s message to his team in the locker room afterward was brief. Before Wake Forest the next day, UNC certainly had to fine tune a few things in practice, but harping on the loss was simply not an option.

And though they still registered three more attack errors than Wake Forest Saturday, Sagula’s team walked away with a 3-0 victory and just 18 errors on 120 attacks. The eight service errors from the night before were cut in half.

“I’d like to be hitting better … but overall I thought we blocked better and hit better and served much much better,” Sagula said.

Junior outside hitter Lauren Adkins who tallied 12 kills said the cleaner play stemmed from a focused Saturday morning practice.

“When the set’s not perfect, when the pass isn’t perfect, (we practiced) just keeping the ball in play and not making careless errors,” she said.

And after a hard fall to the Blue Devils, the rebound less than 24 hours later was just what the Tar Heels needed.

“We discussed, ‘Be mad until midnight,’” Adkins said. “(Saturday’s) a new day.”
And that it was.

sports@dailytarheel.com

To get the day's news and headlines in your inbox each morning, sign up for our email newsletters.