Although they came away with their first loss of the season at Stanford four nights earlier, the Utah volleyball coaches and players learned a lot by playing the No. 1 team in the nation.
"They identified a couple of problem areas for us and that helped us," said Utah coach Beth Launiere.
So the day before Wednesday night's game with Idaho State, the Utes made a few changes and it showed, though not always for the better.
Still the No. 8-ranked Utes did plenty of things right to defeat the Bengals in three games, 30-22, 30-26 and 30-23 to improve to 6-1 on the season.
"We tweaked our lineup and that definitely showed," said Launiere. "We're not sure it's for the better, but it's pretty common to change things up at this time of year."
The changes included moving a couple of players to new positions on the court, but one of the Utes' problems Wednesday was that Launiere let everybody play, which meant there were some skewed lineups on the court at times.
The Utes had the luxury of doing some experimenting against the Bengals, who came into the game with a 2-5 record. But the scrappy bunch from Pocatello gave the Utes all they could handle in never letting the Utes get away in any of the three games.
Sylva Strzinkova, the senior from Czechoslovakia, had an outstanding match, leading the Utes in kills with 15 and also had a fine hitting percentage of .400. Brenda Beal had an even better percentage at .600 with six kills and no errors.
Launiere was a little disappointed with the play of Kim Turner, who was named MVP of the Utah Classic two weeks ago. "Kim is struggling right now, and I don't know why," she said.
While Turner had 10 kills Wednesday, she also had seven errors and a .115 hitting percentage.
After losing the first game, the Bengals played the Utes close in the second game, before Strzinkova polished off the game with a kill. In the third game, the Bengals led early before the Utes got rolling and Launiere substituted liberally.
"It's just a matter of us feeling comfortable with each other," said Launiere. "We have a lot of options, so it's a matter of prioritizing the options and figuring it all out."
This weekend the Utes will play at the Boise State Tournament with matches against Eastern Washington, George Washington and Boise State.
Launiere said Eastern Washington, which is 8-0 and coming off a second-round appearance in the NCAAs last year, will be the biggest challenge.
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