ORLANDO, Fla. (UCFKnights.com) – UCF Volleyball's head coach Todd Dagenais sat down to talk about the 2016-2017 season on Friday.
The Knights finished the season with a 23-10 overall record, the second-most victories in the Dagenais' era. UCF started the season with a 10-3 record in non-conference play, before going 13-7 in American Athletic Conference play, which is the second-best league record since Dagenais has been at UCF. The Black and Gold recorded sweeps of six conference opponents, USF, Memphis, East Carolina, UConn and Tulsa. UCF averaged a record setting 17.1 digs per set and recorded 2051 total digs.
The volleyball program was the first team to compete in the new War On I-4 rivalry series. The Knights swept both of the matches to earn six points for the Black and Gold. UCF ultimately clinched the War On I-4 trophy when the women's golf program won The American Championship.
Both Kia Bright and Jalé Hervey were named to the All-AAC First Team. Hervey also was named American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA) First Team All-Region.
This spring the Black and Gold took on three universities, USF, FSU and Florida.
The Knights started the spring competition season in a tough battle with the Bulls, winning 4-1.
UCF then traveled to Gainesville, Fla., where it took on Florida State at Santa Fe College. The Black and Gold played four 15-point sets against the Seminoles, winning three.
The Knights wrapped up the spring season taking on the Florida Gators at ESPN Wide World of Sports following the Disney Qualifier event. Alli Sabol led UCF with 19 kills, while Jordan Pingel recorded 26 digs.
Here are some of Coach Dagenais' thoughts on the season:
What are some things you would like to see us improve upon this upcoming season?
"The biggest thing that we need to work on is our set distribution," head coach Todd Dagenais said. "Looking back in 2016 you have Jale and Kia. You want to use your outside's about 45 percent of the time. We were way over that, we are depending on them too much. We used our right side a little bit above what we normally would. That was with Alli (Sabol) stepping in as a freshman and unexpectedly taking over and doing really well at that position. (Taylor) Gallart was doing such a nice job in at the right side. We really lacked in the ability to set our middles. The inability to set your middles is often because of ball control or passing, yet we had our best passing year that we've had in five years. So really as an offensive system, one of the things that held us back are the things is that we knew we needed to improve on our ability to get the middles back in the offense again, in both first ball kill and in transition. Taylor Wickey was hitting close to .400 one year and was one of the top attackers in the conference. Last year her numbers took a significant dip but it had nothing really to do with her as much as it did with utilizing our middles the way that we wanted to. Looking back I think that's one of the one of the things that we really need is to change the most."
Was there a moment this season, where you thought we could've excelled more than we did?
"I think when we took a Cincinnati team, who could have been ranked, to five (sets) with All-American candidate, national team candidate and the best player in the league on their team, Jordan Thompson," said Dagenais. "To be able to take them to five and have an opportunity to beat them and not be able to finish that off I think that's one of those moments you wish you had that one back. You also wish you had game five against Temple where you could sweep them on the season. Now all of a sudden you're up in second place. I think that the two matches that really that stood out for us is Tulane both home and away. We were not nearly as competitive in those matches as we had been in other matches and the coaching staff is going to spend a lot of time trying to figure out what it is. Is it a system match up issue? Was it just you know it was a long trip and we didn't get a lot of rest issue? Whatever it was we have to sit and we have to figure out how to solve their type of offense which is a little bit different than everybody else (in the American) is. Not only did we not respond blocking and defensively the way we wanted to, but offensively we weren't able to produce the numbers to overcome it. So I think you look at the Temple match, the Cincinnati match and the two Tulane matches and you say there's some things maybe we could have done differently, that we could learn from, get better at and win those matches."
What are some things you saw in spring competition?
"Well I'll tell you this spring we only had nine people in the gym which is the fewest that we've ever had," Dagenais said. "This spring was about individuals and individual development and getting players to the very next level that they could play at. When we started off you could tell that we hadn't played six on six. We went over to South Florida in a tournament and we did not play well. You could tell there really wasn't much of an offensive or defensive system in place. That's what happens when you don't play 6 on 6 and you're only doing individual training. I think from there from that moment though the team really took that day personally. They found it within themselves to rededicate themselves to figure out this is where we needed to go, we need to get serious about somethings. I think they found a newly acquired commitment to each other and the goals of the program. We had some time and we had to play against Florida State. I thought we played outstanding and then we finished up against Florida where I thought we played really, really well again and did so against a team (Florida) that is just physically so superior as a whole and to be able to play a five game match with them and be right in there, except for the first. I thought we saw our confidence come back from that first weekend and it was like 'oh gosh, we've lost our seniors, we've lost these players, we're not nearly as good as we used to be to know' to 'no, stop and we are as good as we want to be we just have to put it in action' and that's really how I saw USF to Florida State to Florida. I watched that confidence come back, that belief in each other come back and watched them realize 'hey we can be a pretty good volleyball team as we head into the future'. I think they've dedicated themselves putting themselves in the best position to do that."
