STARKVILLE — Mississippi State University volleyball coach Jenny Hazelwood met Wednesday afternoon with her freshman outside hitter Taylor Scott to gauge her frustration level.
The star freshman from California hadn’t suffered a losing streak in high school longer than three games and in her first month of college volleyball has already lost eight of her last 10 matches.
“I think this season has already been eye opening enough (for the younger players) to prove yes, we have more talent than we’ve ever had here honestly but it’s not just about that but it’s about the mental side,” Hazelwood said. “I think they get discouraged. We’re trying to balance holding them accountable with keeping them encouraged for sure. It’s just to help her not get too discouraged.”
The road doesn’t get any easier for MSU (4-8, 0-3 in Southeastern Conference) as it hosts LSU (5-8, 1-3) on Friday at 7 p.m., and then turns around to play No. 13 Florida (9-0, 3-0) at 12:30 p.m. Sunday.
“The good side for us is Lainey (Wyman) and the rest of the (sophomore) class aren’t accepting that this is what this is about,” Hazelwood said. “There’s still an incredible amount of people that are really mad right now. If they weren’t, I’d be concerned.”
One of those people that is mad is Hazelwood as she’s forced to play with a roster of three upperclassmen including two juniors that need to use the rest of this 2012 campaign to prove they belong in the starting lineup as seniors.
“We’re playing eight players on a consistent rotation right now and three are freshman and three are sophomores,” Hazelwood said. “We’re young and that’s just a fact. It’s tough because confidence is a big issue.”
Scott leads the team with 136 kills and leads all non Libero positional players with 134 digs through 12 games this season but has struggled to adapt to SEC defenses that will take away her athletic strengths at the net leading to a .149 hitting percentage.
“The key is figuring out how many of our players over think, how many of them just need to chill out and go play and then how many need to start thinking at all,” Hazelwood said.
In the last match at the University of Mississippi where MSU left with a 3-1 defeat that included an embarrassing final set of 25-12, the word quit was finally brought up among the players in the locker room in Oxford.
“They said it and I certainly didn’t have to,” Hazelwood said. “We did things in the third set (which MSU lost 25-23) to give them points and that’s the youth setting in. They get in the fourth set and it was literally a mental nightmare. It was a mess”
MSU opened SEC play being swept 3-0 at home against Auburn University and this performance sent up alarms among the coaching staff that changes had to be made to every part of preparation immediately.
The Bulldogs hit .089 against the Tigers and never had a lead until the third set of their embarrassing 25-20, 25-16, 25-19 defeat.
“We were awful and that’s just a fact,” Hazelwood said. “They go to that place where they think ‘well, we just can’t do anything right’ as a team through fear. It was all about fear.”
With the arrival of a struggling LSU team, Hazelwood sees an opportunity to get on the board with the first conference win but also admitted that if it doesn’t happen Friday night, the mentality may continue to snowball into the final two months of league play.
“I think about LSU and I have to appreciate that (Tigers coach) Fran (Flory) took over that job my sophomore year at MSU and I remember they weren’t good even in her first four years in Baton Rouge,” Hazelwood said. “I feel like that an LSU, which is consistently good every season, is something that we can certainly be. We’re on the same path as them and it just took time to build it.”
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