COMMENTARY: The worst that can happen, happened

I remember when I first checked the lineups for the first FIU volleyball game on Aug. 24 against University of Florida. When I was curious to see who head coach Trevor Theroulde put into the lineup, there was one glaring omission: the best player on the team was not starting.

Finding out that Jovana Bjelica, the star of the team, broke a bone in her hand in warm ups literally minutes before the game began, was a heartbreaker. But if it hit me like that, I can only imagine the shockwaves that rippled through the team when they first found out. Here they were, stripped of one of the best outside hitters in the country, and now they had to face one of the top 20 squads in the nation.

Make no mistake about it, the situation is dire for FIU volleyball now that their best player is out four to six weeks.

First, we have to understand that there is no replacing Bjelica.

We can talk about coming together as a unit, picking up the slack, creating new chemistry together, and all the robotic stuff coaches love to spew when trying to overcome a player’s injury on their squad.

But we can’t talk about replacing a 4.52 kills per set mark, best in the Sun Belt Conference and 17th best in the country. We can’t talk about replacing the player who led her team—and the SBC—in kills by almost a 2-to-1 margin. We can’t talk about replacing someone who won SBC Player of the Week four times last season and had a strong case for Player of the Year.

Don’t get me wrong, she’s not just some sort of super volleyball machine that churns out spectacular numbers. She is one of only three seniors on the team, one of which is new to the squad, that is being counted on to lead the younger players.

Now, I still think she can do that, and so does she, but it’s going to be painful watching your team lose a lot more games in your absence and then come back to practice and tell them to go back out here and do better next time without you.

It’s one hell of a welcome gift for Theroulde who is in his first year as head coach for FIU.

He now has to scramble and patch together lineups as the season goes and cross his fingers that the freshmen will figure it out somehow.

The loss of Bjelica is a big blow to a team that is notoriously one of the best in the SBC.

FIU has made it to the SBC tournament in November every year for the last seven years.

There is a bit of silver lining, though. If Bjelica misses the four-week minimum, she will only be gone for the first two conference games.

But if she misses six weeks, she returns in the toughest stretch of the season, a six-game stretch where they face Middle Tennessee (No. 2 seed in 2011) twice, Western Kentucky (2011 SBC champions) twice, and North Texas (5-0 in 2012) once.

Last season, the team was able to overcome a loss of outside hitter Una Trkulja in late October and still made it to the second round of the tournament.

But Bjelica is a lot better and a lot more important.
In the preseason SBC poll, FIU was predicted to finish third in the East division of the SBC.

Now that seems like an absolute longshot.