There’s a language to elite volleyball that’s different from any other sport, language that sometimes makes its coaches sound like mystics. It came naturally to former University of Minnesota coach Hugh McCutcheon, punctuated by a New Zealand lilt that made every deep thought sound way cooler.
Keegan Cook, now in his third year with the Gophers after succeeding McCutcheon, speaks volleyball without an accent but in an equally ruminative way. He offered a measure of that last week after the injury-ravaged Gophers, with four starters out for the season and five freshmen in the starting lineup, lost in straight sets to formidable UCLA before the usual raucous crowd of 4,000-plus at Maturi Pavilion.
The Bruins, still relatively new to the Big Ten Conference — the toughest, deepest volleyball league in the country — had been ranked until losing back-to-back matches at home to Purdue and Indiana. It was a tough night all around for the 14th-ranked Gophers, stifled by UCLA’s superior blocking, defense and serving.
Too often, the Gophers found themselves “out of system” in volleyball parlance, scrambling just to get the ball back over the net instead of the steady bump-set-spike of a confident offense in rhythm. Video and coaching couldn’t prepare the Gophers for what they faced in real time.
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“We always tell them, are you listening to the game?” Cook said. “It’s not between me and you. It’s between you and volleyball. The game’s going to tell you yes and the game’s going to tell you no. Make sure you hear the game when it tells you no really well.”
And what did “the game” tell them that night? One, they needed to handle opposing serves better. Plus, this:
“All of our hitters have to know what their scoring swings are,” Cook said. “Against elite teams, you have to have a couple of shots you can rely on to score. Some of our younger players don’t have those offensive identities formed yet, unfortunately.
“Some things can’t be taught. They can only be learned. That’s what I have to remind myself sometimes. If the game tells them no — and it’s telling them no a lot in certain areas — we’ve got to be there to help translate a little bit.”
This isn’t how Cook, or anyone else around the Gophers, envisioned this season going. Led by senior outside hitters Mckenna Wucherer and Julia Hanson, both preseason all-Big Ten selections, the Gophers started out No. 11 in the preseason American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA) poll. The Gophers seemed positioned for their best season under Cook, maybe even advancing past the second round of the NCAA Tournament for the first time since McCutcheon stepped down.
Then the injuries mounted. Wucherer, after missing the season opener against Texas A&M, chose to take a medical redshirt season to deal with lingering back problems. Turkish junior libero Zeynep Palabiyik, a returning starter, tore a knee ligament Aug. 31 chasing a ball in a non-conference match against St. Thomas, ending her season.
Two weeks later, junior middle blocker Calissa Minatee, the Gophers’ most effective hitter in the early going, suffered a season-ending lower leg injury. Three weeks later, redshirt sophomore outside hitter Alex Acevedo — the Most Valuable Player of September’s Diet Coke Classic at Maturi — did the same. Both were hurt on routine jumps, Cook said. Palabiyik, Minatee and Acevedo all needed surgery. All four of the injured are expected to return next season.
“That’s been the uphill battle that we’ve been going through,” said redshirt freshman setter Stella Swenson, the Wayzata High School product and Minnesota’s top prep senior in 2023. “All these teams have had their lineups for weeks, months, and our lineup has been changing almost every game.”
Swenson is one of two freshmen (defensive specialist McKenna Garr the other) who began the season as starters. Three more freshmen — opposite hitter Carly Gilk, middle blocker Jordan Taylor and outside hitter Kelly Kinney — eventually joined them, with Garr shifting to Palabiyik’s libero spot. That makes Garr the obvious target for opposing hitters.
“Keegan was telling me that no matter what happens in a match, you come to practice the next day with a smile on your face and some energy and some positivity,” said Garr, a three-time all-Minnesota selection at Rush City High. “Something I’ve gotten better at is being able to forget what happened the day before or the play before, and just being able to kind of push through.”
The Gophers navigated all the lineup changes well enough in a 12-1 start, winning twelve straight against mostly unranked opponents after a four-set loss to No. 9 Texas A & M in the opener.
Then unranked Michigan stunned the Gophers in four sets Oct. 1 in Ann Arbor. The Gophers were unbeaten at home until the 25-18, 25-22, 25-22 loss to UCLA that saw the entire lineup struggle, freshman or not.
“A lot of people’s roles have grown exponentially, and they need to grow into those roles pretty quickly, whether that’s a young player or an old player,” Cook said afterwards. “This match is a bit of wake-up call for what the battle is going to look like the rest of the season.”
Four days later, again at Maturi Pavilion, the Gophers (14-3) bounced back with a straight-set victory over Ohio State, one of the Big Ten’s weaker teams. The Gophers rolled behind a season-high 11 service aces, four by Kinney and eight altogether by freshmen. Hanson contributed 16 kills with a stunning .560 hitting percentage, and Taylor added six blocks.
“When (Hanson) has matches like that, everyone’s life is pretty easy,” Cook said. “When Julia is that good, we can be bad in a lot of spaces and we’ll be OK.”
Much of the offensive responsibility falls on Swenson, the younger sister of Gophers great and four-time All-American setter Samantha Seliger-Swenson. In volleyball, the setter runs the offense like a point guard in basketball, distributing the ball to hitters along the net, mainly at the pins at each side. An effective offense hums with the setter as the engine, and it hummed against the Buckeyes.
Gophers play fast-tempo volleyball
“I know against UCLA, we struggled to get the out-of-system balls to the net for the hitters,” Swenson said. “But against Ohio State, it flowed so much better and we meshed a lot better, especially after a couple of practices.
“I love the faster tempo offense. One, it looks really cool. And two, there’s honestly nothing better than when I could hold up a blocker on the other team and get a clean window for my hitter, and they can just cram it. That’s one of the best feelings, because I get to see them get so excited, and I get to get super excited for them.”
From here, the schedule toughens. West Coast travel is the new way of life in the expanded Big Ten, and this weekend the now 18th-ranked Gophers visit unranked Oregon and Washington on Friday and Saturday, respectively. Then comes a run of seven conference matches against six ranked teams, including No. 9 Wisconsin (away) and No. 1 Nebraska (home) back-to-back in early November. The only unranked opponent in the bunch, Illinois, received votes in the latest AVCA poll.
The young Gophers need to grow up fast and, as Cook says, listen to what volleyball tells them. Cook likes their chances. “Stay tuned,” he said.
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