University of Georgia Athletics
Battle-Tested Bulldogs Head To No. 3 Florida
September 23, 2023 | Volleyball, The Frierson Files
By John Frierson
Staff Writer
The Georgia volleyball team heads into the start of Southeastern Conference play Sunday fresh off a top-10 win last week on the road, beating then-No. 10 Georgia Tech in four sets. The Bulldogs are battle-tested, which is good, because they open league play at No. 3 Florida.
"We're playing some good volleyball, I'm seeing progress, and I think we're in a pretty good spot," said Tom Black, last season's SEC Coach of the Year.
Georgia not only has last weekend's experience to draw from as it faces the Gators, it also has what happened the last time the Bulldogs went down to Gainesville: a 3-0 sweep of then-No. 11 Florida last season. That win helped the Bulldogs to a third-place finish in the SEC, a 23-8 record overall, and Georgia advanced to the second round of the NCAA tournament for the first time in 27 years.
"I think last year we gained a huge amount of confidence," senior Sophie Fischer said. "Last year our thing was, 'Let's be more confident. We're a good team, let's believe it.' This year, with looking back at what we did last year, we're more like, 'OK, we can do big things as long as everyone believes it.' I think that's going to take us really far, the belief that we were so close last year (to even bigger things)."
The Bulldogs have much of last season's squad back this season, including preseason All-SEC picks Fischer and Kacie Evans, but the team has battled injuries throughout the non-conference part of the schedule.
"We went through a lot of adversity early on, constant injuries, so they got tested pretty quickly, and I thought they handled a lot of that adversity well," Black said. "As our players have started to come back, I think we've been able to find a rhythm a lot faster, because we toughened up a little bit."
One key for Georgia going forward will be consistency, both in terms of health and performance. The win over Tech was big, as any top-10 win is, but the next day the Bulldogs struggled against San Diego, losing 3-1. They followed that with a 3-1 win over Howard.
"The consistency's huge for us right now," Fischer said.
The win over Tech wasn't a typical win in a typical setting. Playing in front of a record crowd of 5,303 in McCamish Pavilion, Georgia dropped the first set before winning the next three. Playing in front of that kind of crowd, junior setter Clara Brower said, will help the Bulldogs going forward.
"I think that going into SECs, that was a really great match — that environment and that crowd against a great team. I think that was a great challenge and definitely prepared us for what SEC play is going to be every week," said Brower, who is averaging 9.5 assists a set.
Like the surge that college softball starting seeing a number of years ago, women's volleyball is on the rise. The most obvious example of that came on Aug. 30, in Lincoln, Neb., where a crowd of 92,003 packed into Memorial Stadium, where the Nebraska football team plays, to see the Cornhuskers beat Omaha 3-0. It is believed to be the largest crowd ever to see a women's sporting event, topping the 91,649 that attended a UEFA Women's Champions League soccer match in Barcelona, Spain, between FC Barcelona and Wolfsburg.
"That game packed a basketball arena, so it was it cool to see what volleyball can do," Black said of the win at Tech. "It was a way cooler moment than I anticipated it being. I'm usually just like, whatever, let's go. But I was even feeling it.
"There's more and more examples happening of where volleyball is pushing and growing. There's a ton of exposure. It's really impressive to see what the sport's doing."
Georgia has played its home matches so far this season at the Ramsey Center while work is being done on Stegeman Coliseum, but the Bulldogs hope to be returning to the Steg in October. Georgia hosts Kentucky No. 22 at the Ramsey Center next Friday.
Staff Writer
The Georgia volleyball team heads into the start of Southeastern Conference play Sunday fresh off a top-10 win last week on the road, beating then-No. 10 Georgia Tech in four sets. The Bulldogs are battle-tested, which is good, because they open league play at No. 3 Florida.
"We're playing some good volleyball, I'm seeing progress, and I think we're in a pretty good spot," said Tom Black, last season's SEC Coach of the Year.
Georgia not only has last weekend's experience to draw from as it faces the Gators, it also has what happened the last time the Bulldogs went down to Gainesville: a 3-0 sweep of then-No. 11 Florida last season. That win helped the Bulldogs to a third-place finish in the SEC, a 23-8 record overall, and Georgia advanced to the second round of the NCAA tournament for the first time in 27 years.
"I think last year we gained a huge amount of confidence," senior Sophie Fischer said. "Last year our thing was, 'Let's be more confident. We're a good team, let's believe it.' This year, with looking back at what we did last year, we're more like, 'OK, we can do big things as long as everyone believes it.' I think that's going to take us really far, the belief that we were so close last year (to even bigger things)."
The Bulldogs have much of last season's squad back this season, including preseason All-SEC picks Fischer and Kacie Evans, but the team has battled injuries throughout the non-conference part of the schedule.
"We went through a lot of adversity early on, constant injuries, so they got tested pretty quickly, and I thought they handled a lot of that adversity well," Black said. "As our players have started to come back, I think we've been able to find a rhythm a lot faster, because we toughened up a little bit."
One key for Georgia going forward will be consistency, both in terms of health and performance. The win over Tech was big, as any top-10 win is, but the next day the Bulldogs struggled against San Diego, losing 3-1. They followed that with a 3-1 win over Howard.
"The consistency's huge for us right now," Fischer said.
The win over Tech wasn't a typical win in a typical setting. Playing in front of a record crowd of 5,303 in McCamish Pavilion, Georgia dropped the first set before winning the next three. Playing in front of that kind of crowd, junior setter Clara Brower said, will help the Bulldogs going forward.
"I think that going into SECs, that was a really great match — that environment and that crowd against a great team. I think that was a great challenge and definitely prepared us for what SEC play is going to be every week," said Brower, who is averaging 9.5 assists a set.
Like the surge that college softball starting seeing a number of years ago, women's volleyball is on the rise. The most obvious example of that came on Aug. 30, in Lincoln, Neb., where a crowd of 92,003 packed into Memorial Stadium, where the Nebraska football team plays, to see the Cornhuskers beat Omaha 3-0. It is believed to be the largest crowd ever to see a women's sporting event, topping the 91,649 that attended a UEFA Women's Champions League soccer match in Barcelona, Spain, between FC Barcelona and Wolfsburg.
"That game packed a basketball arena, so it was it cool to see what volleyball can do," Black said of the win at Tech. "It was a way cooler moment than I anticipated it being. I'm usually just like, whatever, let's go. But I was even feeling it.
"There's more and more examples happening of where volleyball is pushing and growing. There's a ton of exposure. It's really impressive to see what the sport's doing."
Georgia has played its home matches so far this season at the Ramsey Center while work is being done on Stegeman Coliseum, but the Bulldogs hope to be returning to the Steg in October. Georgia hosts Kentucky No. 22 at the Ramsey Center next Friday.
Assistant Sports Communications Director John Frierson is the staff writer for the UGA Athletic Association and curator of the ITA Men's Tennis Hall of Fame. You can find his work at: Frierson Files. He's also on Twitter: @FriersonFiles and @ITAHallofFame.
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