Last season, the Oswego State volleyball team was able to knock off No. 3 seed The College at Brockport in the SUNYAC quarterfinals. The then six-seeded Lakers upset the Golden Eagles 3-2 and now find themselves in a similar situation.

While the opposing team is different, the Lakers enter the 2019 SUNYAC playoffs as the six seed and will travel to SUNY Cortland on Tuesday Nov. 5. Similar to last season’s regular season loss to The College at Brockport, the Lakers also lost to SUNY Cortland earlier this season. The biggest difference, however, is the fact that the Lakers’ loss to the Red Dragons came over a month ago on Sept. 17, while they dropped their 2018 contest to the Golden Eagles 10 days before the playoffs began. 

At first glance, the 3-0 shutout loss to the Red Dragons looks troubling for the Lakers, however, the sets themselves were pretty close, with scores of 27-25 and 25-22. 

As for the Lakers, they remain confident in their abilities after completing their SUNYAC schedule. The team has grown to become even closer, despite a majority of their starting lineup playing together for the last four seasons as seniors. When looking back at that early season loss, head coach J.J. O’Connell was impressed with how clean the Red Dragons play.

“They’re just efficient, they don’t make that many hitting errors. They only had 14 attacking errors in the match,” O’Connell said. “They also have a big block, so they are the tops in the SUNYAC in terms of scoring points at 16.5 per game. They just don’t make a lot of mistakes, so you’ve got to force them into those mistakes.”

SUNY Cortland had the fewest errors during SUNYAC play with 158. Of those errors, it recorded 14 against Oswego State, the third most in any conference game this season. This relatively sloppy play for SUNY Cortland’s standards is due, in part, to it being the first conference game for both teams. This resulted in both teams struggling to find their identities early in the season.

“That was our first SUNYAC game, beginning of the year. We were figuring out who we were,” senior Julia Flohr said. “But now it’s the end of the season, we know who we are and we are better than we have been the whole year. I think everyone is playing at their peak level, and we’re just ready to get them on Tuesday.” 

As excited as Flohr is for her last run in the SUNYAC playoffs, the Lakers still have two more games to use as preparation for the conference battle. This gives the role players a chance to see in-game action in case they are needed to step in and play during the postseason. The Lakers will use their first game of the Alfred University tri-match against the Saxons to reward their bench players.

“Our conference schedule doesn’t give us too many opportunities to get deep into our bench,” O’Connell said. “We like to use our end of season stuff to get our bench involved and … get [them] some reps before we get into the playoffs to see if we can get them engaged.”

The second contest of the weekend is against SUNY Polytechnic Institute. The Lakers will be able to work on some set plays and strategies they want to implement against SUNY Cortland.

“Working on some shots we might need the next weekend against Cortland,” O’Connell said. “We’ve already looked at the video, we know how we want to break them down. It’s just a matter of now getting some practice in-game scenarios.”

The Lakers were able to use this past as a bit of a measuring stick to help with their preparation for the SUNYAC playoffs, as they already punched their ticket to the playoffs. This was the first time for the six seniors that the only thing they had to play for was seeding. Both games were critical for the Lakers, as winning both would have propelled them to second in the conference with a 7-2 record. This was a tough task for Oswego State, as it had to face SUNY Geneseo and The College at Brockport. The Knights have not lost a regular season SUNYAC game in over two years, sitting at 9-0, while the Golden Eagles are in second place in the conference.

“[Geneseo is] undefeated in the conference and we were right there with them,” O’Connell said. “I think playing hard this weekend, even though we didn’t get the results we wanted, set us up for a confident run in the playoffs.”

The Lakers fell to SUNY Geneseo 3-1, but kept it very close in the first two sets. At one point in both sets, the Lakers were tied with them 18-18. The previous day, Oct. 25, Oswego State lost 3-2 against the Golden Eagles. 

Looking back to SUNY Cortland, this is a Red Dragons team that ended their season much like the Lakers, with back to back losses to The College at Brockport and SUNY Geneseo. They will face the Rochester Institute of Technology and New York University on Saturday. When the Lakers travel down to SUNY Cortland on Tuesday, the Red Dragons should not expect the same Lakers team they saw at the Max Ziel Gymnasium earlier this season.

“Every game we’ve played, I’ve seen improvements,” senior Shauna O’Flaherty said. “We still have some things to work on, [but] it honestly gives me a lot of confidence knowing we played Cortland over a month ago … from where we were then to where we are now, I think we improved a lot.”

O’Flaherty transferred to Oswego State after a season at the University at Albany where she played club volleyball. The senior has built a strong bond with her fellow seniors who are not ready to say goodbye.

“It’s awesome, I get to keep playing for longer,” O’Flaherty said. “I’m not ready to be done, so it’s just awesome to have another game.”

Photo by William Rogers | The Oswegonian