Nothing really went Wichita State’s way on Friday in the Shocker Classic. The team was coming off of a promising showing against No. 13 BYU the day before, a match where they ultimately stole a set, and then failed to get any traction against Virginia Commonwealth the day after.

As a team, the Shockers recorded 18 hitting errors and five service errors in route to the team’s second straight loss. It was a loss that WSU head coach Chris Lamb was left scratching his head about.

“I don’t know if I could prove this, but I feel like we were somewhat distracted,” Lamb said after Friday’s match. “I don’t know–I feel like we are too young to take much for granted, but this makes me wonder.”

Lamb was also disappointed with his team’s defensive effort against the Rams. As a team, the WSU allowed VCU to hit a high .472 for the match and was only able to record two blocks in three sets of play.

“With our defensive performance tonight, I mean, you can’t look at that and feel like we were competitive, prepared, or both,” Lamb said.

The Shocker coach also addressed setting as another early season issue. Junior McKayla Wuensch started the season as the team’s setter, but freshman Kayce Litzau has eased her way into playing time as Lamb is trying to find a rotation that is successful. When speaking on the amount of attacking errors, Lamb mentioned the setting problems.

“You can’t put it all on them (hittters),” Lamb said. “Errors ultimately come from attackers, but I’m not saying that setters don’t make it more difficult at times, and that’s be an issue at the early part of the season.

I don’t want to make any excuses for the attackers, but we’ve turned some good passes into bad sets, and that’s frustrating. We’ve got some work to do.”

For sophomore hitter Megan Taflinger, she’s trying to take the match as a learning experience. She also wants the team to understand that point of view too.

“I think the biggest thing is to take it as a learning experience,” Taflinger said. “We need to understand that there should not be a lower point in our season than this, but we also need to know what it’s like to feel like this (disappointed), learn from it, and just say that ‘tomorrow is a new day.

We didn’t feel like we were as competitive as we should’ve been. We didn’t feel like there was people on the court who were showing that they wanted it more than what VCU was wanting.”

One thing Taflinger made sure to mention was that she felt like players need to be “harder with each other in practice” so the team can ultimately be more successful down the road.

The Shockers look to rebound and end their current two-match losing streak against No. 3 Texas on Saturday. The game is slated to start at 7 p.m. inside Charles Koch Arena, and will be broadcasted on Cox YURVIEW.