STARKVILLE — Jazmyne Johnson feels the need for speed.
More importantly, the junior middle blocker understands the importance of playing fast to the Mississippi State volleyball team.
That was the edict first-year head coach David McFatrich established for the Bulldogs for the 2015 season. For a program that has had only eight winning seasons since its inception in 1975, change has been a frequent ingredient, so McFatrich’s idea to increase the Bulldogs’ tempo wasn’t surprising.
While McFatrich’s strategy might not be surprising, the results MSU has been delivering certainly are attracting attention. On Sunday, MSU swept Ole Miss 3-0 in Oxford. The victory was the Bulldogs’ first sweep against the Rebels since a 3-0 win on Sept. 13, 2006, in Starkville. It also marked MSU’s first victory against Ole Miss since 2011.
The victory raised MSU’s record to 11-4 and 1-1 in the Southeastern Conference. For a program that last had a winning season in 2006 (17-13), the fast start has generated a lot of enthusiasm and a belief that times could be changing in Starkville.
“It’s not surprising to us,” said Johnson, a transfer from Middle Tennessee State. “We’re blessed to have Fatch as a coach. … It is all (about) buying into the system and all having the same mind-set. A lot of people didn’t expect State to have the record we have. There was even some talk that we only have that record because we haven’t played anybody. A lot of people always try to find ways around it, but I think after we beat Ole Miss it definitely opened peoples’ eyes.”
MSU will try to build on its first SEC win at 6 p.m. Friday (SEC Network) when it takes on No. 21 Kentucky (9-5, 2-0) in Lexington, Kentucky. MSU will wrap up the weekend at 11 a.m. Sunday (SEC Network) with a match against South Carolina at the Newell-Grissom Building in Starkville.
McFatrich, a former assistant and head coach at Central Arkansas, said volleyball teams always want to have an attacking attitude, so there isn’t a strong correlation between an aggressive mind-set and playing quickly. He said he is more focused on the rate in which his team plays to help it have success. He said the Bulldogs want to shrink the amount of time between contacts, particularly the time between the pass to the setter and the set to the hitter, because it limits the amount of time a defense has to set up or to get in position to make a play.
McFatrich said his team has bought into that way of playing, which he said isn’t common. He said a lot of teams prefer to take care of the ball and play at a slower pace. He said he has seen the pace his team plays at has resulted in faster approaches, higher jumps, harder hits, and greater confidence for his players.
“They have bought in,” McFatrich said. “We’re an anomaly. Some people talk about going faster and we feel like there are some nuances you have to know if you’re going to choose to go faster. If you don’t know those nuances, it can be frustrating.”
In an attempt to prevent his players from getting frustrated, McFatrich said he explained to them that the pace the Bulldogs wanted to play at was a high standard and that their execution and success in trying to reach that level wasn’t immediately going to be at the same place. He said the goal was for the Bulldogs’ execution and results to improve gradually so it eventually would hit the same level.
For Johnson, that adjustment was compounded by a move from right-side hitter to middle blocker. Johnson said McFatrich and the assistant coaches helped ease her transition. Still, for a player who had played right-side hitter all her life, it was surprising other people picked up on how comfortable she looked on the court. In fact, she smiled Wednesday because she always said she “never” would play middle blocker, even after her father always told her never to say never.
“Now I love playing middle, which is the crazy part,” Johnson said. “I have a ways to go at it, but it is a start.”
Johnson is fifth in the SEC in blocks per set (1.20). She leads MSU with 10 solo blocks and 54 total blocks. She also leads the team in hitting percentage (.319) among regulars. She is third on the team in kills (97) and is fourth in number of attacks (210).
“She is the best blocker I have probably ever coached,” McFatrich said. “I didn’t factor (her ability to be a defensive force in when he considered moving her to the middle). I was just thinking, ‘Jazmyne, go put the ball away.’ ”
Johnson also never imagined she would have so much success on defense. At 6-foot-1, Johnson is one of seven players 6-foot or taller on the Bulldogs’ roster. MSU doesn’t have a player taller than 6-2.
“(Blocking) is one of the first things I learned when I started playing volleyball,” Johnson said. “My footwork was horrible. It was all messed up, but I could block, so moving to the middle I was more focused on hitting because my hitting is not stronger than my blocking.”
Evie Grace Singleton, a 5-10 outside hitter, is another player making an immediate impact in her first season at MSU. Singleton played for McFatrich at UCA, so she has an idea what to expect when she decided to transfer to MSU. She said McFatrich kept pressing and encouraging the players early in the season to go faster. She said the Bulldogs that will play Friday are a “completely different team” from the one that started the season. She said everyone buying into the family concept and that way of playing has helped make that transformation possible.
“Each person had to make a choice to buy into the system because if you have even one person — regardless of if they are on the court or not — not buy into the system, it doesn’t end up working,” Singleton said. “After the Alabama game, I think we realized if every single one of us isn’t on board, we are going to have matches like that where we kind of fall apart and the wheels might fall off a little bit. We really clicked in the Ole Miss game — all of us. Everybody was all in. Every single person had a job and did it. The execution level was absolutely amazing.”
Singleton said MSU’s passing was so much better against Ole Miss than it was against Alabama, a 3-1 loss in which the team won the first set. She said passing is the cornerstone of playing at a fast pace. She said McFatrich had to “clean up” a lot of things in terms of positioning. Once that was done, she said things started to fall into place so the Bulldogs were able to stay low to the ground and to watch the ball from their arms to the setter’s hands. She said the ability to deliver a pass quickly forces the hitter to play faster because she doesn’t have any time to waste to get into position and capitalize on the set.
Singleton has put herself in position more times than any Bulldog. She is fourth in the SEC in points (4.29 per set). She leads the Bulldogs with 164 kills and 423 attacks (.199 hitting percentage). She also is MSU’s leader with 24 aces.
“I wasn’t really sure where my place was going to be on the team,” Singleton said. “I was going to work my hardest to see the court, but my philosophy coming in was going to be if I am going to play, that is great because that means I am doing my part to help the team. If it is not best for me to play, that also is doing my part and I will do my best from the bench.
“Everybody wants playing time, but I look at it like the whole team is involved. I feel blessed to be a part of making a difference this year because nobody expects Mississippi State to do well this year.”
Singleton said she feels “blessed” because she always dreamed of playing in the Southeastern Conference. She said she was recruited by Division II and lower-tier Division I schools in part because of her height. She said her decision to transfer was a no-brainer. She said she is “stoked” to be a part of a building process that has surprised a lot of people. Knowing what McFatrich accomplished at UCA (two NCAA tournament appearances, 72.7 winning percentage), Singleton isn’t surprised by what MSU has done in the first two months of the season.
“I mean it when I say when we play how we know how to play, there is not a single person who can stop us,” Singleton said. “I wasn’t surprised by the Ole Miss win because I could look on each of my teammate’s faces during that game and see the confidence and the will to win. I knew we weren’t going to lose the match. If we can take that into every other match, I am not surprised.”
Johnson also isn’t surprised. She said MSU’s position as one of the SEC’s smallest teams won’t prevent it from pulling more surprises.
“I just felt like they didn’t know how to stop us,” Johnson said of Ole Miss. “They didn’t know what hit them. Ole Miss is a very good team, but our offense just works for us. It may not work for everybody, but it works for us. I think everybody on the team realizes if we pass this fast and the middle is going this fast, the offense will be going this fast.”
Follow Dispatch sports editor Adam Minichino on Twitter @ctsportseditor
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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