Team Previews 2005-2006 - The Rest.

Team Previews – The rest.

DHG Odense – Probably the biggest question mark at this point, nobody really knows who they have to play for them, some people are even questioning if they have a team or not. Assuming they do have a team, it is extremely hard to predict where they will end up. DHG seems to find a way to put things together at the last minute so they might end up with a decent team. Anders Hoyer should still be there along with Martin Nielsen so that is at least a start. They’ll need “Mio” to play well as he looks like their only setter and they’ll need Jakob Oppenheim to play well even though he is still fairly young. Of course, you can never rule out some of the older guys stepping in and playing for the first team. As far as I can tell, there are too many question marks surrounding them to consider DHG one of the top teams; however, I’m too nervous to say that they won’t do well considering that they always seem to put something together. So, let’s let them sit here somewhere in the middle.

SK Aarhus – Big losses for them from last year include both setters, Mikkel Simonsen in the middle and Lars Hoppe playing outside. They will also lose the deadly middle/libero flexibility of Jesper Pedersen, and we all know that if you are seriously considering making a run at a title you have to have Jesper P. included somewhere in the action. What they’re left with is a potentially good team with little experience.

Their new Japanese setter is definitely legitimate; he runs a nice offense, plays the middle well, strong in defense and has a fairly solid jump serve. What he lacks is communication with the rest of the team, of course, this will come as the season moves along.

It will also be a year where Sasha and Ole finally get their chance to play consistently, both can play well and are hard workers but are untested playing consistently over a whole season. Brian Nordberg will continue to do well as they will look to him even more for offensive help. Danny Kurulyo (I’ll never spell this correctly) is solid but not going to carry them from what I’ve heard.

All in all it looks to me like SK will be somewhere in the middle. They are too unbalanced in my mind, their passing is still a question and their roster is fairly small at this point, if there are injuries or one of the starters is not playing well they won’t have much to fall back on. I think they will struggle with consistency throughout the season, but they certainly will be dangerous at times. No matter who is playing for them, this team has been to the finals the last two years in a row. It is also worth mentioning that you never really know who will pop up on their roster midway through the season…

Lyngby Volley – It seems that it has been out with the old and in with the new over there in Lyngby. They have said themselves that they will try to be more focused on training and development this year than they have been in the past. I hope this does not mean the end of warm up football! They have also got quite a few people coming into the club this year who can help them tremendously. Add that to their core of veteran players and you have a solid team. Lyngby has always been hard to play against when they are on, the question was always which team would show up. Last year we played them four or five times and each time I think we played against a completely different team. I’d also like to take a second to mention that I think it is too bad that William Menzel has stopped, I’ve always enjoyed playing against him. I also have great respect for all the work that he does for Lyngby and for volleyball in Denmark.

This team will probably be good for a few upsets this year, what they lack in order to be one of the better teams is consistency and, like a lot of other teams in Denmark, a strong setter. Especially if they stop giving themselves the excuses to mess around all the time, this team will be better than expected.

Holte – I don’t have much to say about Holte. I don’t know who they have to play this year, especially since Kristian Bech and a few others decided to go to Gentofte (Watch out for Alex Jacobsen by the way, if you haven’t seen him play before, I think you are in for a treat when you do. He was definitely one of the most fun players to watch play this year on the beach) Holte is going to have a tough time competing with what looks like a strong Danish Elite division this year.

Hvidovre – Honestly, I’ve always thought that this team has underachieved. Playing against them I think to myself that they should at least be challenging for a top six placement but it never seems to happen. Kasper does a good job setting, they have good outsides and their middles, while undersized, do a decent job. I’ve seen that they have a large team this year and are doing some good things, I hope it translates to some more wins for them this year. I think that they don’t really think they can win against the good teams and therefore they handicap themselves but that is just my opinion. If they concentrate on doing the things that they know they can do well then there is a chance that they will be stronger than most people think. However, until they prove that they can do it I have no choice but to leave them somewhere near the bottom.

PVC Lyngby - A bit of a surprise that they made it up to the elite level. There were rumors that they might not even have wanted to be promoted but here they are anyway. I can't pretend to know very much about this team but from what I've heard they are fairly reliant on two guys - Jeppe Brinck and Kristoffer Bergholt (This has nothing to do with this post, but it just reminded me, someone was telling me that they were thinking about naming their child Kristophpher and spelling it with the two ph's instead of ff's, what a ridiculous thing to do...) two guys that have been around for quite a while. I've also heard that possibly some people weren't very satisfied with the way the team was run... So, to me it looks like they are headed towards a tough season especially considering they will be stepping up a level in competition. It may be possible to rely on two outside hitters in the first division but unless they get some help out of the middle and can distribute the ball a bit they are going have trouble against bigger blockers. It will be interesting to see how they fit in amongst the elite teams this year...