Volleyball Preseason: Week One In The Books

MEMPHIS, Tenn. – One down, two to go.

That's where the 2019 University of Memphis volleyball team preseason schedule is now after the Tigers closed their first week of drills Saturday. Memphis put a wrap on the preseason's first practice week with a scrimmage at the Elma Roane Fieldhouse, a first visit to competition court for the team's nine newcomers. The squad holds its practices at the Larry O. Finch Center.

After the scrimmage, head coach Sean Burdette gave some thoughts the first week of work and what he's taking from Saturday's first "match."

What is the biggest positive after the first week of preseason practice that culminated in Saturday's scrimmage?

"One of the positives is having depth at every position which leads to competition at every position. The biggest thing is being able to pick and choose and putting certain players against each other and allow the battles to unfold and see how they compete."

After today's scrimmage, what are the areas that still need some work?

"Serving is an area where we need to improve, and that was evident in today's scrimmage. We were sometimes lackadaisical in our serving approach. We've been very good in our service game in practice this week. Maybe it was us moving over to the (Elma Roane) Fieldhouse and having a match 'feel' made it a little different.

"Serve receive-wise defensively, we had a lot of great contact from different players. That was pleasing to see we could be in system and get a pretty good sideout percentage and also dig the ball into a transition swing."

You said after last Saturday's first day of preseason practice that the team was using the first week to implement the offensive and defensive systems. How did that go?

"We've implemented some new things with our team defense, so the offense and defense are at similar places in our preseason. We have Sabrina (Bianco) come in as a setter, and her and Molly (Murrihy) are doing a great job in speeding up the offense a little bit. Both bring a different consistency, and Molly brings a little more going into this fall (after she was the primary setter a year ago). It's good to keep the hitters in the same tempo. We have a lot of hitters that can hit at the same pace and can do the same things.

"From an offensive standpoint, we have to be able to move players around a little more and get our middles involved. I like what I see from our attackers on both the left and right sides."

What are the goals for the second week of preseason drills?

"We'll continue to work on our blocking and defensive schemes. We'll also work on our transition game and getting our middles involved. We'll try to figure out who plays well with one another – that's the biggest thing this week.

And you're just under two weeks until the season opener (Aug. 30).

"It gets here really quick. We go two-a-days for one week, and then school starts and we pull back. We then hit the road for Eastern Illinois' tournament. You blink and it's going to be here. We have a solid week of work in front of us, and we want to get the most out of it."

The Tigers open the 2019 campaign Aug. 30-31 at the EIU Panther Invitational in Charleston, Ill. Memphis faces Drake and South Dakota State Aug. 30 and wraps up action in the two-day tournament against host Eastern Illinois Aug. 31.

Memphis hosts its home opener the following weekend (Sept. 6-7) when the Tigers welcome Arkansas-Pine Bluff, Gardner-Webb and UT Martin to the Bluff City for the Tiger Brawl.

University of Memphis Athletics

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