Volleyball team unhappy despite ranking

Arizona Daily Wildcat UA starting setter Michaela Ebben (1) and freshman Elvina Clark (3) prepare for the ball while warming up for the Australian national team earlier this month.

They retained the No. 15 USA Today/AVCA ranking, the Wildcats' highest since 1995, after the team's five-set win over Arizona State Friday.

Its 10-1 mark overall and 2-1 record in the Pacific 10 Conference placed them fifth in arguably the nation's best volleyball conference.

The team is hardly content with where it stands right now though.

"I've seen our team play better as a whole, especially in the spring. We've played much better than we are right now," senior Michaela Ebben said.

After Friday's contest in which Arizona bounced back from a 0-2 deficit to win the match, coach Dave Rubio warned that Arizona will not be successful in the conference if it continues playing so erratic.

They hit .201 as a team Friday. In three of the five matches, UA hit under .200, including a .106 mark in the opening game. The Wildcats also committed 13 service errors.

"The reality is we haven't been that sharp but the good news is that we're still winning," Rubio said.

"The biggest thing in my mind is that our confidence and aggressiveness elements seem to come and go. When we've struggled, it's because we're playing unaggressive, passive and more timid."

In preparation for Friday's match against Washington State at McKale Center, the Wildcats met for a mental training meeting Monday. Arizona knows it will have a difficult time pulling out a victory over the sixth-ranked Cougars if they continue to be plagued by errors.

"The meeting was very productive and very important," Rubio said. "It's necessary to keep everyone on the same page. Crises happen through the year at different times and if the team is communicating well, when crises occur the team will be more resilient."

The meeting with team psychologist Jeff Janssen lasted more than 90 minutes and did not allow time for practice on the court. Ebben said a lot of people spoke up and said a lot of good things, including assistant coach Steve Carlat.

"He said we need to accept the fact that we are a really good team and once we do that the sky's the limit but we haven't accepted that as a team," she said.

"We're more competitive (than last season) but we're having trouble showing how competitive we can be. We're kind of holding it back."

The other mental training tool Arizona uses are personal notebooks that players fill out before and after practice to improve their competitiveness, among other things.

"We've written goals through the years and added to it. Each day we set physical and mental goals and break down ways to accomplish those goals. At the end of practice we rate ourselves," senior Michelle Fanger said.

Rubio has used the notebooks for a few years now. The players evaluate themselves in five areas - leadership, coachability, work ethic, competitiveness and concentration.

"It takes the intangible words and allows our players to think in more tangible means. Like being competitive means sprinting hard for a ball," Rubio said. "We're not being competitive enough as a group. We need to show and demonstrate these five things to (the coaches) so an outside observer would see them."

Fanger added, "becoming great is a matter of taking what we've heard for four or five years like taking risks, being competitors, mental toughness and being able to conquer adversity and doing it on the court during a match."