Due to a scheduling conflict, the volleyball team had to play back-to-back games in a day at its own tournament on Friday at the Temple Invitational.
“The situation we are in is not very good,” coach Bakeer Ganes said. “As the host we shouldn’t be playing back to back. We had a team who couldn’t come here, which put us in a situation where we didn’t have a choice.”
Temple played against Central Connecticut State at 4 p.m. and had an hour and a half break before they played Navy Friday night.
The Owls have been in these situations before while playing on the road at tournaments, but not at home. Ganes said the key to success in a doubleheader is getting his team ready without tiring them out.
“We’ve got to conserve our energy when we do the warm up for the second match, you can’t really do the same warm up we do when we play one match,” Ganes said. “It’s a tough situation because the turn around is so quick.”
“When we play double headers we have to play more focused,” Ganes added. “We can’t make unforced errors because then we get sloppy and then we get in a hole, and then we have to dig ourselves out of a hole.”
Senior libero Chelsea Tupuola said that focus is key when playing twice in a day. Tupuola said the team played a little flat in their first match.
“Against Central Connecticut we came out too relaxed which is not something we need to do,” Tupuola said, “A lot of teams are going to get on us. They don’t care if we’re smaller. It was a hard transition with the fast turn around. We had to come out more focused.”
Temple was .500 in double headers before today’s matches, with a record of 6-6. This was the last double header of the season for the Owls, and they will end their double-header season at 8-6. Even though the coaches and the players would rather have their games spread out the Owls are having their best start since 2002, when they made it to the third round of the NCAA tournament.
Tom Sheehan can be reached at thomas.sheehan@temple.edu.
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