Michigan associate volleyball coach Leisa Rosen was talking to just one player, but she might as well have been talking to the entire team.

“You need to stop thinking and just start playing,” Rosen said after Wednesday's practice.

The Wolverines are coming off a very disappointing weekend in which they gave away two near-wins which could have propelled them into third place in the Big Ten standings.

But the team had difficulty closing out its opponents, a problem that has plagued the Wolverines all season.

Michigan (6-6 Big Ten, 18-6 overall) is the only team in the conference to squander a 2-0 lead in a match twice this season.

And the 20th-ranked Wolverines hope that won't happen a third time as they host Northwestern and Wisconsin this weekend.

“After a weekend of going 0-2, you’re a little bit more urgent,” Michigan head coach Mark Rosen said. “You want to get back to winning, but at the same time we can’t try to do things too differently.”

Last Saturday, Michigan squared off against then-No. 20 Purdue, the Wolverines took a well-deserved 2-0 lead heading into the intermission.

“I thought we were playing well going into the break — serving tough and defending well,” Rosen said.

Michigan’s comfortable lead quickly evaporated as the Boilermakers showcased their offensive prowess after the break, hitting an average of .359 in the last three sets.

The key to the match may have been the wide margin in blocks, with Purdue notching 12 more than Michigan.

Blocking has been a weakness all season for the Wolverines. In Big Ten contests, Michigan is averaging just two per set.

But Mark Rosen doesn't see it that way.

According to Rosen, his team was losing the “serve-and-pass battle”.

“Whenever we serve, we’d like to have their setter to be on the run, where she is setting somewhere outside the 10-foot line and making their passers pass the ball off the net,” Rosen said.

But in the match against the Boilermakers, the Wolverines were the ones serving the ball outside the 10-foot line, giving the Purdue blockers time to set up.

The same thing happened against Wisconsin in the beginning of October.
The Wolverines were up 2-0 on the Badgers and let the lead slip away. Wisconsin eventually came out on top in a five-set match.

This weekend Michigan has a shot at redemption against the Badgers.

The Wolverines hope to take what they have learned from these two heartbreaking defeats and turn it into two solid wins in the friendly confines of Cliff Keen Arena.

“We don’t want to forget (the losses) but we don’t want to dwell on them,” junior libero Megan Bower said. “We’re focusing on finishing strongly, trying to take as much positive out of the matches as we can.”

Over the course of the season, Rosen and the coaching staff have implemented game-like situations into practice. The team scrimmages itself, with the score starting tied at 17.

“We do a lot of drills where we try to recreate that situation (close-out points) in a game when you’re on the court and you get nerves,” sophomore setter Lexi Zimmerman said.

But Rosen doesn't attribute it to nerves. He thought his team is thinking a little too much on the court, instead of just playing.

“Play hard, play hard, play hard,” Rosen told his team. “If you guys just play out there, it will come to you.”