While most teams like to use the first few games of the season to see what kind of shape they are in, the Duke volleyball team may have taken that idea a little too seriously.
After playing three games in the span of 24 hours this weekend, the Blue Devils will know exactly where they stand.
"I think we are inexperienced, so it's good to have tournaments like this early in the season," sophomore Kristen Campbell said. "You get t
o see several different teams which helps you out late in the season."
The action begins on Friday night at 7:30 p.m. as the Iowa Hawkeyes, ranked 30th in the USA Today/AVCA preseason poll, come to Cameron Indoor Stadium. There will be no saving the best
for last as Iowa should give Duke its best competition of the weekend. While the Duke players may be unfamiliar with the Hawkeyes, first-year head coach Linda Grensing saw more than her share of Iowa during her time as an assistant coach at Ohio State.
"
I think Iowa is a more experienced team," Grensing said. "The group of starters they are returning finished third in the Big Ten behind Ohio State and Penn State, two Final Four teams last year. Their strength is in their outside hitters and the
y may be a
little weak in the middle."
It would be hard to find a better early season match-up as the 23rd-ranked Blue Devils seem to mirror the Hawkeyes in strengths and weaknesses. Campbell will not experience any lack of firepower from a setting standpoint, whil
e sophomore Maureen Reindl and senior Virginia Hall, two of only a few Duke players with match experience, will most likely see plenty of time at the outside hitting positions.
In the middle, Duke has many different options between the 6-foot freshmen Meg
an Irvine and Chrissie Lukasiewicz and the 6-foot-1 sophomore Jill Van Oort, but little in the form of playing time.
"We are inexperienced in the middle, but we have some very athletic young players," Grensing said. "They'll play really well at times and
they'll be great by the end of the season."
Duke is no stranger to these whirlwind weekends, as it has always tried to fit in as many games as possible before taking on its Atlantic Coast Conference opponents. In the past two seasons, the Blue Devils have
lost four out of the 18 early-season games they have played, but this has translated into better late-season performances as they have gone 31-3 against ACC foes over the same two seasons. The goal for the game against Iowa remains the same as in previou
s seasons--get as many players in the game as possible and worry about the wins later in the season.
"We'll set some goals towards winning, but the goals won't be for a certain win-loss record," Grensing said. "The goals we set will be about doing certain
things during the game.
"You take a team like Iowa, and when you play a team like them competitively, then it can be considered a good loss."
While Grensing will accept a competitive result against a ranked team, she is looking for her team to show its po
tential against Georgetown and DePaul, the other two teams Duke will face this weekend. Duke will take on DePaul on Saturday at noon, and will finish its slate with Georgetown later that night at 7:30 p.m.
While Duke would like to prove that it is worthy
of its ranking, the highest preseason ranking it has ever received, this type of attention fires up other teams looking to make a mark on the national scene with an upset.
"[The ranking] gives us a goal to strive for," Campbell said. "We've been working v
ery hard in practice lately. If we play like we've been playing the past couple of practices, I think we'll win our games."
Regardless of the outcome of this weekend, Duke has little rest to look forward to as it heads for another three-game weekend in Kn
oxville, Tenn., and then a two-game homestand the following weekend. The hope is that a busy schedule in the beginning of the season will lead to an even busier schedule in the postseason.
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