FORT COLLINS — The concern has dissipated.
Coaches always tend to worry about everything, but Tom Hilbert’s curiosity as to if his Colorado State team would be efficient enough on the left side is no longer an issue.
It took opposite ends of the spectrum — Marlee Reynolds is a fifth-year senior and Jasmine Hanna is a true freshman — but the duo has proven to be productive on the outside as the No. 7 Rams return home this week for a pair of Mountain West matches.
“I feel good. I think we’re getting what we need out of those guys, and I think especially the fact that they don’t blow up,” Hilbert said. “Jasmine, for a freshman, is managing her game really well. Even if she doesn’t have a really good game from a kill perspective, she’s not hurting us.
“Same thing with Marlee. She’s had some games where she wasn’t super-terminal, but she’s getting better and she’s not hurting us by blowing balls out of bounds.”
The Rams enter Thursday’s match with UNLV (7 p.m.) with a 14-1 mark (2-0 MW) and having played the best competition by far in the conference. They also rank second in hitting percentage (.288), and it has a lot to do with the efficiency in which Reynolds and Hanna are attacking.
Hanna leads the team with 3.24 kills per set, Reynolds right behind at 3.08, and both of them have been getting better as the season has progressed.
“That’s what it has been is just a progression,” Reynolds said. “At the beginning of the season, I don’t think we were being as productive as we could have been. Just looking back at the numbers from the first weekend to now, we’ve been more productive, less errors. We’re helping our team out by getting more kills.”
Reynolds is shy to say so, but she’s playing with a lot more confidence right now. Two weekends ago she was the tournament MVP at Arizona State, and last week she produced 27 kills in a pair of conference wins.
At times, Hilbert said they need Reynolds to be that go-to player, and recently that’s what she’s been late in matches.
“She has great confidence. Her and I had a talk about making a mistake and not following it with another mistake,” he said. “I think she has specifically tried to come back from a mistake and make a big play. We need that kind of stuff, and I think it’s worked.”
Hilbert thinks the competition in practice — and he includes true freshman Sanja Cizmic in that scenario — has raised all of their levels, thinking each one of them should constantly be looking over her shoulder.
That also extends to matches, where Hanna said she doesn’t want to let Reynolds or her team down.
“Marlee is the senior, so I look up to her,” said Hanna, who had 23 kills of her own last week. “She’s the OH1, so if I see her doing well, I need to do well too. I would feel bad if she was doing really well and I came in and we went down a bunch of points.”
In UNLV (13-3, 1-0 MW), CSU faces a team Hilbert said is vastly improved. The Rebels are low error on offense and currently lead the Mountain West in blocking at 3.16 per set, led by Bree Hammel who is third in the rankings at 1.57 herself. Reynolds said it will be a challenge, one that will force them to read blocks and see the floor better.
Hanna, who has had to grow on the fly, learning she has to hit higher than ever before because of the athleticism at the college level, has so far been up to the task. She went from a player who Hilbert felt he would redshirt to one the Rams have counted on, making her more aware of the expectations.
“I knew coming in that was an area that was open, and I’ve worked really hard, I know Marlee has worked really hard, all of our outsides for that matter,” she said. “We knew that was a position somebody needed to step up in. I think we’ve done a good job of stepping up and playing well, but of course there’s things we still need to work on.”
Colorado State closes out the homestand with an Orange Out game Saturday against San Diego State (5-6, 1-0), the team that ended the Rams’ 27-match win streak last season at Moby Arena.
Contact Sports Editor Mike Brohard at 970-635-3633 or mbrohard@reporter-herald.com and twitter.com/mbrohard