Rottenburg Match

The last match before the break in the German league was against the winless team of Rottenburg. However only a couple of days previous Rottenburg had taken a set of Duren in Duren, and were certainly not going to underestimate them. The first set started well with Tommy P on fire, killing everything and serving a great jump serve ace when the Rottenburg passers thought he would simply continue his float serving, therefore only leaving 2 passers in the rotation. After taking an early lead it was relativelly smooth sailing as we took the set to 21. The next set again started in our favour and we sped to an early lead for most of the set. However the nervous 20's started to creep in as they have in previous matches. Again at 20 we were unable to side-out efficently like we had throughout the entire set and we were quickly caught. Even though Rottenburg stepped up their serving it was dissapointing to let this happen to us again, it's something mental that we have to work on if we want to show our dominance and finish of games in 3 rather than 4. In the 3rd and 4th set we played like we needed too, aggresivelly and like a team that was in control. there was nothing spectacular, just solid side-out and effective transition hitting. We were never worried taking the 3rd to 16 and the 4th to 18.
So now we have played the 3 winless teams in the competition, winning all 3 in 4 sets. I think this shows that the German league goes rather deep this year, which is great because it's always good to have to earn a win every week rather than simply knowing you were going to win, which is what happened many times in Denmark last year. So now we have a tough run after the break with SCC Berlin, Duren and Eltmann. Some good wins there will leave us in a great position for a semi final spot at the end of the season.