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It’s a new era for Michigan volleyball.
Last year, the Wolverines opened conference play against Michigan State. With an inexperienced team that made numerous errors throughout the game, Michigan fell in three straight sets to a dominant Spartans team. It was seemingly just another loss in a long season, but the Wolverines — and especially their coach, Erin Virtue — remembered.
“We owed them from last year,” Virtue said, speaking not just of that initial loss but of the loss later in the season, as well.
But this isn’t the same team — far from it. Already this season, the Michigan volleyball team (11-1 overall, 1-0 Big Ten) has won more games than the entirety of last season, when it finished 7-22 overall and 5-15 in Big Ten play. But until Friday night, the Wolverines had not been tested in Big Ten play. Michigan needed to prove it could win inside its conference, not just outside of it. And the Wolverines did just that, knocking off the Spartans (7-6 overall, 0-2 Big Ten) 3-0.
“We know we can do it, and the more that we win, but also the more that we just play together in practice and in games, the more we’re trusting each other,” graduate outside hitter Allison Jacobs said. “And we know what we can do. We know what Michigan volleyball looks like, and the fact that we put that on the court for the first game of Big Ten — I think it just makes us hungrier for more Big Ten games.”
Michigan began the game strong, but fell 4-7 to Michigan State due to a number of errors, including lack of communication. Senior middle blocker Jaque Boney landed a huge kill that the Spartans failed to return to stop Michigan State’s four-point run. Then, the Wolverines’ blockers went to work, stuffing the Spartans on the next three points for their own four point run. Despite errors and solid play from Michigan State, another four-point run from Michigan gave it an insurmountable lead at the end of the set and led to its first set victory, 25-20.
The Wolverines cruised through much of the second set, but struggled to close out the set, though they eventually succeeded. The Spartans were no closer than a two-point deficit for much of the set, and were at times down by as much as five points. But near the end of the set, a series of sloppy plays culminating in an out-of-bounds serve from Jacobs, tied the set 22-22. It wasn’t just Jacobs — Michigan recorded five service errors in the second set.
But if the Wolverines were making errors, Michigan State made far more. Virtue attributed plenty of those errors to Michigan’s strong play.
“We talk about errors in this game a lot,” Virtue said. “And Michigan State certainly made a lot of attack errors, more than we were expecting. That’s a really good team across the net, but sometimes that happens when you’re digging and blocking in the way that we were and causing them to maybe attack in other spots. I like to think that sometimes those are forced, but there were certainly some unforced errors as well.”
The Wolverines continued to force the Spartans into errors in the third set with Michigan State recording eight attacking errors, three of them in the first four points. Meanwhile, Michigan’s attacking errors nearly disappeared as it recorded just two for the whole set. Leading the way on creating those errors for the Spartans were the Wolverines’ blockers, who recorded four blocks in the set.
“Our block was putting up great spots,” Jacobs said. “Our defense was behind them. Think they might have thought that they had nowhere to go.”
Michigan’s third set performance wasn’t the dominant offensive performance from the second — instead, it was a lockdown defensive show, led by junior middle blocker Serena Nyambio, Boney and sophomore outside hitter Valentina Vaulet. Senior libero Maddi Cuchran served an ace to clinch the win for the Wolverines, 25-17.
It was a complete reversal of the two teams’ positions from last year. Michigan is now on top. While the Spartans are weaker than they were last year, the Wolverines are also far stronger. Virtue’s strategies to build a new culture of Michigan volleyball has so far reaped wins, and her players have bought into her system.
“It’s validation,” Boney said. “All the work that we put in in the past couple of months is working, and everything that we did in spring and summer is paying off. And like, if we keep the momentum, like, we can keep improving what Michigan volleyball is.”
The buy-in is there. Now, so is the first conference win. The new era of Michigan volleyball has begun.
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