The Bears faced off against the Hofstra Pride, the Delaware State Hornets and the Temple Owls this past weekend at the Temple Invitational tournament in Philadelphia.
Bruno started off Friday with a 3-1 win against the Pride. While the score suggests a one-sided victory, the match was extremely competitive with two of the four sets forced to extra play. The final match statistics reveal that the Pride had a better hitting percentage, more blocks and more digs than the Bears. Brown led only in aces, having eight to Hofstra’s four. The Bears played key points well and secured the win by defeating Hofstra swiftly 25-18 in the fourth set.
On Saturday, the Bears faced the Hornets and then tackled the Owls.
In the first match, Brown defeated Delaware State three sets to one. Brown’s defense excelled by collectively achieving 63 digs. All three first-year starters had a strong performance in the game.
In their final match-up of the tournament, the Owls flew past the Bears 3-0. The Bears’ hitting percentage was significantly lower than that of their opponents, and a tough Owl defense resulted in a decisive loss.
“I think the weekend overall went well even though we lost our last match and even though we had the potential to beat Temple,” said McKenna Webster ’16.
A key weakness was Bruno’s many unforced errors, which, if limited, could have changed the outcome of the match, Webster said.
“At the beginning of each game — when we played (Temple) — we dug ourselves into a hole … so trying to get up from such a large gap was hard,” McKenna said. But she said she was optimistic about the team’s progress, citing the improvement in the team’s focus from the start of the season.
Head Coach Diane Short said she sees development in this year’s squad from last year and credits much of this to strong intra-team competition during training.
“The competition is better on the team,” Short said. “That always helps the team to be stronger when you have other players pushing you to be better.”
Short said she is looking forward to the upcoming Ivy season, which starts Saturday when the Bears travel down to New Haven, Conn. to face the Yale Bulldogs.
“Yale won the Ivy (Championships) last year and that’s our first match, so we’ll see how we measure up to the top team in the league right away,” Short said.
Short said she thinks the team will improve from last year, and she wants to see “high intensity, very consistent effort and focus” going forward.
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