We Win, the Bundesliga Standings are Unimpressed.

Coming into this weekend, there were still a lot of different playoff scenarios. The three teams below us in the standings all had the possibility of finishing above us. We also had the ability to move up to fourth place and get home court advantage for the first round of the playoffs if Unterhaching lost to Eltmann.

Well, we did our share and won: 3-1 against SCC Berlin. Unfortunately Unterhaching won also.

So, now the situation is that we are most likely going to finish fifth. Our win over the weekend makes it impossible to finish any lower than fifth which is a good thing. But we'll need a lot of help if we are going to move up.

The match was really positive for the team and for me personally. We've been playing well in the last couple of weeks, beating Friedrichshafen, playing a solid match in Dueren and now beating SCC Berlin. That's 2-1 against the top three teams in the league...not bad.

We started well, playing consistent high level volleyball. They played good defense but couldn't really turn anything into points. They looked a little out of rhythm and didn't really challenge us in the first.

The second set saw the roles reversed as we started making mistakes, attacking and passing, and they worked themselves into the game. The outcome was never in doubt as they stretched a lead in the middle of the set to six or seven points. I got to come in late in the set but it didn't change much as they continued to side out.

I got the chance to start the third set and from the first point I could tell it was going to be a good day. I had good touch and the passing was really solid so I could do a lot of the things I wanted to do. We sided out at a high level and picked up enough points here and there to win the set.

The fourth set was pretty much the same. We got a lead early and did enough to protect it until the end. Tomas' kill down the line ended it 25-22 and 3-1 in our favor. Needless to say, I was very happy.

For me, this weekend was extremely important. Over the season I've had chances to come in and play quite a bit. I've come in and helped us to wins over Rottenburg, VCO Berlin, Koenigswusterhausen and a few others. But this weekend's match against SCC Berlin was particularly satisfying for a few different reasons.

First, Berlin is one of the best teams in the league. So, getting a chance to play against them and especially to have success is a really good feeling.

Second, in my own opinion, I've been playing really well in practice for about the last month. I feel like I'm constantly improving but haven't really had a chance to show it on the court during a real match. To get that opportunity and for it to work out the way it did was really important for me.

Third, it's just hard in general to be on the bench. Playing a significant role in our win, simply put, felt good. It gives confidence and it serves as a reminder of why this game is so much fun.

In the end, we got a big win that doesn't seem to help us that much in the standings. While we are assured of fifth place, it doesn't look likely that we'll pass Unterhaching for fourth place. The playoffs start in a couple weeks, things are starting to get exciting.

Dueren and Some Other Things

Last weekend was Dueren, another Champions League team, and after our defeat of Friedrichshafen, the number one team in the Bundesliga. To add to the level of difficulty we had to play in Dueren which is not an easy task. From what I've been told, beating Dueren at home is extremely tough. Apparently, last year's finals were decided by home court advantage. Dueren won all of their games at home and Friedrichshafen won all of their home games. Luckily for Friedrichshafen, they got to host the final game of the championship series. Maybe some unnecessary information, but I just wanted to set the stage for how important home court advantage can be sometimes.

Anyways, I take back my statement about Rottenburg being the best gym in the league, Dueren is definitely better. The crowd was louder, more intense and generally more full of energy. Of course, when your team wins all the time, it is easier for the fans to be excited and to create a really cool atmosphere.

The game was actually fairly positive for our team. We played well enough at times to take strings of points and were never completely blown out of the match until the last ten points of the last set. We had opportunities to win the first set and we won the third set in convincing style. In the end, their serving was better than ours, or at least it caused more problems than ours did, and they were able to score more transition points. Possibly because they had the option of setting to their opposite - Quero - who I decided during the match has a fifty-fifty chance of killing the ball no matter what situation he is in. What I mean is, if the set is low and tight and there is a well set up three man block in front of him, he has just as good a chance at killing that ball than if he is looking at a perfect set in a one on one situation. He's a great hitter who is like a box of chocolates. And we all know what that means.

We lost the match and now we move towards the end of the season. We're sitting solidly in fifth with a very small chance of finishing lower. There is still the opportunity to move up at least one place and finish fourth which would mean a great deal to us as we would have home court advantage in the first round of the playoffs. After this weekend everything should be a lot more defined.

On another note, we've pretty much run out of middle blockers. Dirk is done for the season with his judo inflicted shoulder injury. Artur is questionable for the time being with a quadricep problem - he has not practiced this week. And that leaves Andy as our last remainig true middle. Nate has done a little work out of the middle for us and we have a second team middle who helps us out at practice but neither is a great solution for our problems. A good story that I think sums up the whole situation comes from yesterday: Jens contacted a former Bayer middle blocker who played on the team a couple of years ago but hasn't touched a ball in about a year to see if he would help us out in training and in the game this weekend. He said he would and came to training yesterday with the plan of easing his way back into things. What happened after about forty five minutes of playing? Jammed his thumb blocking on an attack from Peter. The joint capsule is messed up and the doctor says that it is very unlikely that he can play this weekend. Apparently the gods are against us at the moment.

So, we'll give it a shot and see what happens. I guess the best we can hope for is that no one hurts themselves before we play on Saturday...

Champions League?

Ahhhhhhhh. On nights like these, as I sit in the fountain of Apollo, gently reclining, buoyed by the breasts of several young virgins, I lke to ponder the intricacies of living life, not as mere mortal, but as a god.

True, being a god among men can be difficult. (Ha, who am I kidding?) You get to wear sweat pants all day every day and no one can say anything to you. Of course my sweatpants are made of the hides of thousands of rare arctic snow foxes which are then sewn together by either Dolce or Gabanna. I prefer Dolce, but sometimes he is too busy even for me, so I have to use Gabanna :(

The oxygen that is pulled into my lungs emerges again, tinged with gold, carrying the smell of sweet wine and success to the rest of the world. People who stand next to me suddenly look taller and stronger (of course they actually look smaller and weaker because my personality and bone structure take over any room I am in) just because of my mere presence.

I have eaten the heavenly ambrosia of the gods and let me tell you: it is a disappointment. Now, I only eat meat that is taken from my own flank and roasted to perfection by my own team of master chefs. In this way, I save the world from an appetite which is boundless and get to eat of something that is worthy of my discerning pallete. My skin is made of rainbows and vitamin C tablets - Vitamin C tablets that are actually made of multi-vitamin tablets that offer the full daily allowance of every element from the periodic table (yes, including - ununquadium.) - it is very shiny. One time, I let this human take a bite of my skin, do you know what happened? Spontaneous combustion.

You guys heard of Sasquatch? I beat him in a two out of three arm wrestling match. Nice guy.

I think after I'm done here, I'll wrestle the legendary dragon-like beasts of far away worlds and after defeating them, create a new master race of god/dragon hybrids which will rule the universe for eternity. No big deal.


Ha! 3-1 to us.

I'm not going to spend too much time on the signifigance of a win like this. Of course it is a big win for us, for the standings and for our confidence, but I'm not going to say that this win means anything more than that. We caught them at the right time and we played our asses off. Our passing was incredible throughout the match, we got a few timely blocks and serves and then built enough of a lead in the fourth set so that we could hang on when they made a run of points. They also missed a few too many serves and didn't seem as sharp as they normally do, especially in passing. Their coach is Germany's national team coach and well respected by pretty much everyone, so maybe I'm not qualified to question him, but he seemed awfully stubborn, refusing to make any substitutions through the first few sets. Their outside hitters did not perform well, and with the quality they have on the bench, I'm surprised they didn't make a move earlier.

Anyways, it feels great to win a match like this. If not for a few questionable calls in the second set, it could have easily been a 3-0 win for us which is kind of staggering seen in the light of the beating that we took when we played them earlier in the year. It's the great thing about sports, you get to test yourself with every new game and measure your progress in very real terms.

We've got a lot more work to do. Hopefully we are headed in the right direction though. In the space of one month we've lost to one of the worst teams in the league and beaten a possible top four European team - I have no idea where we are going next...

Rottenburg

The Map24 printout said that the trip to Rottenburg would take about four hours. Apparently, the computer didn't adjust for Friday afternoon traffic...

Rottenburg is a college town with a lot of things going for it. The location is excellent, deep in the South of Germany, reasonably close to the border and surrounded by natural scenery.

The club is also fairly impressive. As one of the worst teams in the league, they average 2500 spectators per home game. The gym is a perfect place to play volleyball: the right size, high ceiling, nice atmosphere...and covered in pink paint. In my opinion, it's the best gym in the league.

Unfortunately for them, all of this hasn't been enough to create any success on the court.

Our guys came into this one with a slight tinge of urgency. We've lost two straight away matches and neither of those were pretty games. We all knew that if we played the same way we had we'd be looking at another disappointment. Besides that, we're in a dogfight for a good seed in the upcoming playoffs. The match against Rottenburg represented the last "easy" match of the year as we have Friedrichshafen, Dueren, Berlin and Eltmann remaining on the schedule. Two points were an absolute must.

To our credit, we came out playing well. Surprisingly, Rottenburg didn't just lay down in the face of the Wuppertal juggernaut, they decided to play a good match as well. We weathered their first set assault and won a close one.

As we have done so many times before this season, we lost intensity in the second set, and ended up losing that one without putting any real pressure on them.

After a little talking to in the locker room we got our game together and figured out a way to win the last two sets.

Overall, the game was fairly unremarkable. We played fairly well in the three sets that we won and we have to be happy with that. But, this was a match that we had to win so there can't be too much celebrating about it. I think we're satisfied and happy enough to move on towards what is going to be a hard final stretch of the season. If we can get a few wins we'll be in great shape for the playoffs. If not, it's going to be interesting to see how it all shakes out.

Matches

Two wildly different results in the last couple of weeks. And I think that the difference illustrates the importance of the home crowd to our team.

Last weekend we played in a small town called Delitzsch and lost an ugly match 1 - 3. They are currently one of the worst teams in the entire league and losing to them is nothing less than a catastrophe. From the very first ball we played poorly. We hit a ton of balls out or into the block and we didn't do anything positive to make up for the bad stuff. We saw a quick edited compilation of all our mistakes in a row yesterday - it wasn't pretty.

Matches like that are the hardest to figure out. You can always look back and think about how poorly we practiced the week before or look at the problems we ran into when both of our opposites weren't fit to play, but that doesn't really give any answers for why we played so weakly in the actual match. The guys who were there shouldn't have been affected by any of that stuff. It's kind of like, immediately after the match, you understand what you did wrong and if you had another chance to play the same game the whole thing would happen differently. I don't know if that makes sense, but I am 100% sure that we would play an entirely different game if we had another chance to play them. It's like a lesson in instant wisdom.

I guess the trick is figuring out how to change the bad vibes during the match and not have to wait for the 20/20 rearview vision. Sometimes I think we should have little cheat notes that we could refer to during the games. Several lines of text tattooed right on our forearms: Stay Aggresive. Play with heart. Don't be afraid to make mistakes. Etc... Maybe that would help. Anyways, the whole thing was embarrasing and hopefully we won't have to deal with anything like that again.

Yesterday, we played VCO Berlin at home and the outcome was completely opposite. I wouldn't say that we played a whole bunch better, and this is where the home crowd comes into the argument, but we did enough to get out of there with a 3-0 win. And it looks like when everything is all settled at the end of the season, set score is going to be pretty important so 3-0 is also big for us.

There wasn't anything too remarkable that happened during the match so I don't want to spend more time on it.

Off the court we've had some...ahem...interesting things happening lately. Starting with the league's top blocker and one of our co-captains breaking his shoulder trying to do a judo roll for a university test. Sometimes that Fortune lady is a bitch. He's basically out for the year and it's not so much that I don't trust his replacement, it's more that we now only have two real middles. Nathan is actually our new backup middle blocker. No matter how well he bounces balls out of the position, it is asking quite a bit to have him learn to play middle in the space of two months. Just a negative development in so many ways. But, we'll see, maybe it will force us to pick up our game in different areas. I should also say that I feel terrible for Dirk, he's a great guy and it always sucks to see someone injured like that. Hopefully he'll be back and ready to go as soon as possible.

Otherwise, it was fun this weekend to have a visit from some of the people from Amager Volley. Always nice to see some people from Denmark and to get a chance to show off a little for them. I guess this weekend wasn't too bad of a choice considering that it is Karneval here in Germany!

This weekend we're off to Rottenburg and another win is absolutely necessary. Apparently they have one of the best fan bases anywhere in German volleyball - around 2500 people at every match - so it should be fun to see what it's all about down there.

To the East again.

One more time headed east towards Berlin and Leipzig. This time we're going to Delitzsch to play one of the lowest ranked teams in the league. Needless to say, we have to win. Delitzsch though? Isn't that a weird name for a city?

Anyways, at some point soon I'd like to reflect a little bit on the differences that we see when we leave the comfortable confines of what used to be West Germany. Maybe when we get back on Sunday...we'll see.

Moers

This weekend it was Moers at home in the Bayerhalle. For reasons I talked about in an earlier post, there was little room for a bad performance from our side in this one. Fortunately, it turned out to be a positive experience for everyone.

Moers is kind of an enigmatic team. They've got arguably the best attacker in the league - Georg Grozer Jr. - and a pretty solid supporting cast around him. They played themselves into the Cup finals recently after beating Dueren and SCC Berlin in the quarterfinals and semifinals respectively. But they've also been inconsistent in the league. Currently they are sitting eighth in the standings.

When you're playing a team like that, you just have to be more solid than them. Don't give them the chance to get hot. Don't give them any reason to elevate their game or get excited. Keep constant pressure on them and they will eventually crack. I think that we did all those things and it resulted in a good win for us.

We served well, they did not. We passed well, they did not. I've said it before and I'll say it a million times more before I die. When you win the serving and passing battle you will almost always win the game.

Some notes from the match:

Apparently, Moers' libero was sick and did not play in the match. This forced one of their back-up outsides to play the libero position which in turn forced their coach, none other than, Georg Grozer Sr. to suit up. He was very good back in the day. Also pretty crazy. But he is, shall we say, slightly past his expiration date now so it was kind of weird to see him sub himself into the match. At one point I realized that it was the first time I had ever played indoor volleyball against a father/son pairing. I started thinking about what I would say to my dad if he just kept shanking passes and I couldn't really come up with any ideas. It must have been awkward for them though.

The sets to Grozer Jr. were beyond high balls. I can't imagine what he would do if he was going one on one instead of the normal three man block that he sees.

Peter was really good when he came in for us. Ended top scorer and therefore justified the awkward picture above...

Handball

I got to sit down with the rest of our team last night and see the second half of Germany vs. France and then the entire Denmark vs. Poland match afterwards. Our team, of course, is made up mainly of German players but, and it's kind of funny, we also have Danes and Poles. So, three out of the four semi-final teams were covered. Both matches were obviously exciting. Too bad that Denmark couldn't pull out the victory, a Denmark vs Germany final would have been a lot of fun to watch on Sunday. I haven't had a chance to really process everything that happened but it turned out to be a truly interesting night.

Just seeing the difference between the way Germans and Danes approached the two matches was riveting. You could almost sense the way the Germans sat back and expected to win in the end. Obviously, they were nervous and excited, just like any sports fan would be. But, there was a distinct difference from the way the Danes acted. I don't know if you can call it arrogance, confidence or just a more "been there, done that" attitude. It was weird. Their team played solid, didn't make mistakes (except on that one play where the guy lost the ball in the backcourt) and won in the end. It was like their fans knew it would happen and therefore they were more calm.

The Danes on the other hand were all over the place. They played amazing at times, made some terrible mistakes, couldn't score for long periods even though they had plenty of chances. The fans were positive that Denmark couldn't win. They expected losing and they seemed afraid to really believe that they could win. And in the end, they didn't.

I wonder if this kind of thing means something deeper. Does it mean that Danes have been burned so many times with their teams that they have a hard time really putting their hearts behind them? On the other hand, Germany has had so much success on the international scene, football, handball, etc... that it is easy for a German fan to root for their team. Or does it mean that Germans just have more of a winner mentality? Or maybe, since Denmark is smaller, these kind of events mean a lot more to them then they do to Germany. When a Danish team makes it to the Semi-FInals of a major tournament that means so much more than when a German team does.

I could just be making this stuff up in my own mind. But it seemed to me that there was a real difference in the way the two groups of people approached the match. Sometimes I wonder if that is a reflection of the players on the court or if the players on the court reflect that nervous energy from their fans. Does the confidence of 19,000 fans rub off on the team they are rooting for? Or, by the same logic, does the refusal to believe in your team make a difference to the players on the court?

That relationship between players and fans seems kind of like a real relationship between any two people. The fans want to support their team and they want to believe that the team they root for is the best. The team on the other hand agrees to always do their best and to give the fans something to be proud of. If either side doesn't fulfill their resposibility then problems happen. If the team keeps losing and not playing well, then the fans have a hard time giving everything to the team because they, understandably, don't want to put in so much effort to a lost cause. Ironically, if the fans are dead and they don't create a great atmosphere for the players then that will negatively affect the way the team plays.

I don't think it can be argued against that some teams benefit from playing in front of their home crowd. I guess my question is whether some teams can be negatively affected by their fans and whose responsibility is it to make sure that that never happens?

I kind of ended off on a little tangent, but I think the question is an interesting one. Originally, I just wanted to say I thought the games were exciting and I'm a little disappointed we won't be seeing a Germany vs Denmark final. But I guess I'll still have the opportunity to be nervous and pessimistic when Denmark is playing against France for third place...