UNC volleyball to face Duke before Late Night with Roy

 

North Carolina volleyball coach Joe Sagula grew tired of telling his players to run sprints. He had already done that about a dozen times Thursday when he decided to take it a step further.

“It’s like you expect to sprint. If you play with that effort again, that’s 10 sprints,” Sagula told his team.

The Tar Heels were preparing for one of the biggest matches of the season.

At 4-2 in the ACC, UNC stands in fourth place in the conference, behind a three-way tie for first place. Florida State, Duke and Georgia Tech are 6-1.

The Tar Heels will get a crack at one of those leaders at 5 p.m. today. The Blue Devils will take the floor at the Smith Center in a match immediately preceding Late Night with Roy.

“I know one thing from watching film on Duke,” Sagula shouted before one of the sprints. “If we challenge them to a sprint race, we’ll win a sprint race.”

What peeves Sagula the most is watching the ball fall to the floor when somebody should have made an effort to keep it alive. When that happens, he tells the team to line up on one sideline and sprint to the other.

Sophomore right-side hitter Courtney Johnston agreed that doing sprints was an important way to discourage that from happening.

“We have a young team, and I think everybody has a problem, struggling with going for every ball,” Johnston said.

The Tar Heels are hoping the fans find the match as important as the team does.

Last year, UNC defeated favored Clemson at home in the match before Late Night. The win started a nine-match winning streak that propelled the Tar Heels to a share of the ACC title with Duke, but the audience didn’t get into the action.

“We demolished Clemson, and they were bored,” Sagula said. “The crowd was bored. I just don’t think that they understood how to jump and yell and scream around.”

The Blue Devils returned all but two starters for this year and have started the season 16-3. Five of their six ACC wins have been three-game sweeps, and their only conference loss was to No. 19 FSU.

Johnston said she wants the audience to be more attentive this time against a formidable foe.

“If we get the fans into it, it puts a huge burden on Duke, having to come in, in front 15,000 people,” Johnston said.