Reusse: Despite injuries, Gophers volleyball still winning

The Washington Huskies’ 2022 volleyball season ended Dec. 2 with a four-set loss to TCU in an NCAA tournament opener in Madison, Wis.

The Gophers’ season and Hugh McCutcheon’s exceptional tenure as coach ended Dec. 8 with a four-set loss to Ohio State in a Round of 16 match in Austin, Texas.

Five days later, the Gophers announced that Keegan Cook, with a solid résumé at Washington, would attempt to continue Minnesota’s volleyball excellence.

“The first thing you say when looking into a new job is, ‘Tell me about the airport,’” Cook said last week. “The second thing is, ‘Show me my setter.’”

Cook knew what he would have in the position for two seasons with Melani Shaffmaster, a 6-foot-3 All-Big Ten player left behind by McCutcheon.

He was also interested in the committed setter who came next, Stella Swenson, a high school sophomore and also much occupied in high-level club play … of course.

“They took me to see her,” Cook said last week. “I wasn’t the recruiter for Stella, but after I watched her for a half-hour, I said, ‘I want to coach this kid.’”

Now Cook is coaching that kid he watched for a half-hour in 2022 and thankful for that because Swenson is setting for a talented Gophers bunch that continues to be limited by injuries.

Mckenna Wucherer, an All-Big Ten outside hitter, decided at season’s start to stop battling a back injury and a take a redshirt season as a senior.

Zeynep Palabiyik, the relentless junior libero from Istanbul, came out of the fourth match of the schedule with a season-ending injury. Calissa Minatee, another junior and becoming something of a revelation up front, came out of the ninth match of the season with a similar injury.

The player taking advantage of the playing time afforded with Wucherer’s absence was Alex Acevedo, a redshirt sophomore — one semester without playing at Oregon in 2023, then a transfer to Minnesota.

There was a quick conversation with Vicki Seliger, coach, mother of setters (Stella and all-time great Samantha Seliger-Swenson) and other athletes, on Tuesday and this was her scouting report:

Yes, now this:

On Sunday, in a match at Northwestern, Acevedo went down on a play in the second set that didn’t look particularly dangerous. She left the match, and there still were tests being done on her left knee Monday.

On Tuesday, suspicions were confirmed: “Alex won’t be available for our Wednesday match with UCLA, and probably for quite some time after that,” Cook said.

The diagnosis wasn’t complete, but there’s a strong chance that Acevedo will be the third player to need meniscus surgery — with 16 matches remaining in the 20-match Big Ten season.

“In 20 years of coaching, we’ve never had anything close to this,” Cook said. “Maybe two meniscus injuries that required surgery in all that time. This could be three in less than half of a season.

Cook paused and then said: “You know what really impressed me, though — showing the character of Alex and of our players as a whole?

“When I got to our facility this morning, Alex was in there lifting weights with her upper body.”

If this were football, coach P.J. Fleck would require 25 injured players to be out for the season to match the volleyball team’s bad luck.

Cook has a 16-player roster. There will be 12 available Wednesday night, some of whom haven’t been playing. There’s also the rotation requirement, which sends players out of position and often to the bench.

The result of the injury situation will be this: Cook’s starting lineup for the moment will have five freshmen — redshirt Swenson at setter with first-year player McKenna Garr at libero plus rookies Kelly Kinney, Jordan Taylor and Carly Gilk up front.

Not now.

Last week, there was an interview with a Gopher and she said: “A lot of people, including me … we have to step into bigger roles. I’m playing a bigger role. We have freshmen doing the same.

“We have a lot of depth. We’ve had competitive practices, and now we get to showcase our depth in matches.”