After surprisingly successful 2022, young Auburn excited for future

It wasn’t a match or even a set that stood out.

It was one point.

Auburn played Mississippi State in its third SEC match — it followed two wins over a rebuilding Alabama squad — and State was an NCAA Tournament team the season before. In the first set, Auburn junior setter Jackie Barrett provided freshman outside hitter Madison Scheer with a perfect “go” ball, which Scheer promptly smashed over the block for a point.

“I remember the exact ball, the exact swing for Madison,” Crouch said, “and I was like, ‘Yeah, we’re going to be OK.’ ”

Crouch hardly could be blamed if he had trepidations about his 2022 squad which ended up with the most program victories in the rally scoring era. There’s rebuilding and then there’s starting from scratch. The latter is what Crouch essentially faced with last season’s team. What’s more, Auburn was picked by the coaches to finish 12th in the 13-team league and none of his players made the preseason all-conference team.

His roster featured two juniors, and only one, Barrett, had significant experience in Auburn’s program. (The other, Chelsey Harmon, appeared in 33 matches for Portland over the previous two seasons.) The rest of the roster consisted of two sophomores — with a combined 43 matches of college experience — one redshirt freshman and seven true freshmen.

There was little indication this group would wind up in the NCAA Tournament, much less knock off Creighton in the first round on the Bluejays’ home floor.

“At no point in the preseason could I have predicted where we would be at the end,” Crouch said. “The first week (of the season), we were squeaking out two-point wins over Georgia State and Belmont, programs that are just not on the same level as Creighton. There’s no way I would have thought we would have been at that level at the end.

“Such a testament to them, working really, really hard.”

The backbone of Auburn’s unexpected success — the Tigers went 22-9 overall and 10-8 in the SEC — was the freshman class. Three of them, Scheer, outside hitter Akasha Anderson and middle blocker Kendall Kemp, earned spots on the conference all-freshman team, and Anderson earned All-SEC recognition.

Kemp, a 6-foot-6 product of Eagan, Minnesota, who averaged 1.67 kills and 1.48 blocks per set, said most of the players in her incoming class were able to forge a bond before coming to campus.

“All of our freshmen who came in were super close,” she said. “We all committed our junior year in high school, so we all had a chance to get to know each other. We would see each other in club tournaments, so we all kind of already had a relationship with each other.”

Kemp was one of the few who got to campus in the spring of 2022, and, Crouch said, she was able to work on some individual skills. The bulk of the class, however, didn’t arrive until August, leaving little time to iron out the kinks.

With so few players acclimated to the rigors and expectations of college volleyball, Crouch went back to basics. Or, perhaps more accurately, he went to Ground Zero because, in his words, the freshmen “had no idea what to do.”

Barrett helped to take some of the burden off Crouch and his staff. For one, she had two seasons under belt, knew the drill and didn’t require the same indoctrination as the freshmen. Secondly, she could be a de facto coach on the floor — and off it.

“They look up to her a lot,” Crouch said. “She knows what the set is supposed to look like. It would have been horrible if there was a freshman setter along with the freshman hitters. Nobody would have known what it’s supposed to look like. At least Jackie could say to them, ‘Yeah that was the tempo. That was the location. You were on time,’ or, ‘You weren’t on time,’ or, ‘You were late … This is what we do on a road trip. This is how we pack. This is what to expect.’ ”

Added Kemp: “It took us a little while to figure out what that kind of leadership was going to look like, but our setters, Jackie and (sophomore) Jordan (Sinness) really stepped into that very well. They were always there if we needed to talk to them. During workouts, they were always pushing us.”

Anderson emerged as arguably the most accomplished of the freshmen. But even she was brought along slowly at the beginning, playing only three rotations.

“Coach just wanted me to get acclimated to playing college volleyball,” she said, “and I was learning so much.”

But when a medical issue forced another player out of the lineup, Anderson was thrust into the six-rotation role sooner than expected. Scheer, too, was brought along slowly. With her passing skills not efficient enough to play all the way around, she was limited to playing across the front.

Freshmen liberos/defensive specialists Zoe Slaughter and Sarah Morton helped to pick up that slack. Morton averaged 3.84 digs per set, and Slaughter averaged 2.19.

Slowly but surely, the freshmen started to grow into their roles. They were helped in the process by a comfortable early-season schedule, which included no ranked teams and no Power 5 opponents.

The spoon-feeding worked, as evidenced by the win over Mississippi State. That not only made those outside the program take notice, but those within.

“So when we beat them, everyone was like, ‘OK, we can actually play high-level volleyball in the SEC and not just beat the smaller teams,’ ” Anderson said. “We can take out the team that just got an SEC ring last year.”

Scheer, 6-1 from Eureka, Missouri, would go on to average 3.06 kills per set, and Anderson became a solid all-around contributor, averaging a team-best 3.54 kills  to go with 1.86 digs and 27 total aces.

The athletic Scheer proved to be a quick learner as Crouch sought to expand her “attacking toolbox.” The day before Auburn’s SEC opener against Alabama, Crouch told Scheer to work on a sharp, 4-to-4 swing. She went out and executed several, with great success, against the Crimson Tide.

“I was kidding with her afterward,” Crouch said. “I said, ‘Is that all I have to do, Madison, is ask you to hit that shot?’ There’s no ups and downs with her. She’s just always the same. The effort level is always the same.

“The kid is smiling all the time, whether we’re winning or losing. She’s smiling when she’s swinging. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before.”

Kemp was strong in the middle and also proved to be a quick study. She said she was rarely called upon to hit slides during her club and high school days, but she developed that shot as her season with the Tigers went along.

Her blocks per set led the SEC, but perhaps her best ability was her availability. With Harmon the only other middle on the roster — she averaged a respectable 0.88 blocks — the Tigers were thin at the position and could ill afford an injury.

Auburn weathered that storm, too.

That issue should be alleviated in 2023 with the Tigers securing two transfer middles: Bella Bell, who was on Kentucky’s 2020 national title team; and Kyla Swanson, who previously played at Illinois.

“We kind of were just rolling with the punches as freshmen,” Anderson said. “The first couple of games were really interesting. But we kind of got through it, and it became really fun.”

Anderson, a 6-3 outside from Reston, Virginia, turned into the team’s workhorse. While her .175 hitting percentage looks pedestrian, she took more than 1,200 swings, nearly 300 more than Scheer, so, Crouch said, her efficiency suffered.

Still, she served notice that she has the makings of an upper-echelon player in the SEC for years to come. Crouch said she has All-American potential.

“She was also cleaning up even more than Madison because she was hitting back row, out-of-system sets, all those kinds of things,” Crouch said. “The sky is kind of the ceiling with her. She just needs some time and reps to become a better digger and passer.”

Said Anderson: “I knew that I wanted to have a successful freshman year. I wanted to be all-SEC freshman. That was definitely my goal, but I did not see all the other things happening along with it. We also just had very different expectations going into the season. Our expectations were not to be in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.”

And yet that’s where the Tigers wound up. The 21-25, 25-21, 25-20, 16-25, 15-11 victory at Creighton was only the second postseason win in program history. The other was in 2010.

Auburn lost to Houston in the second round 25-27, 25-16, 12-25, 25-23, 15-8. Scheer had 17 kills in both NCAA matches.

So what does Auburn do for an encore?

Spring workouts are underway, and Crouch and his players said they already can see a night-and-day difference from where they were just a few months ago. Along with their usual offseason regimen, the Tigers 2023 prep will be supplemented by a trip to Europe, where they will compete against teams from Italy, Slovenia and the Czech Republic.

That should set the bar higher for this fall. Well, Crouch said, yes and no.

“I think the raising the bar piece isn’t so much about, can we go further in the tournament or can we be higher in the conference,” he said, “because I think the conference is going to be even better this year.

“The bar is about can we be consistent. If we end up in the same place with the same record and the same place in the tournament, that might not look like it’s raising the bar. But I think it is. You did it again, and everybody knows you’re good. You’re going to get the best out of everyone.”

Added Anderson: “I don’t think that there’s too much pressure because we still are in our building phase. We’re still in the phase like we’re getting there and feeling it out and playing good volleyball and getting better every chance we can.

“And we’re kind of in that stage where the games that we lose are going to teach us … I think we just did a good job of staying calm and knowing that everything we’re doing right now is a learning experience.”

Crouch will open the 2023 season with far less uncertainty than he did a year ago. Having that young of a roster was a first for him in his nearly two decades of coaching. The flip side of all the angst was the fun factor.

“They were just excited to play volleyball,” he said. “Lots of joy and lots of energy going on. “This group and this season was just by far the most special I ever had in all the years I’ve been coaching.”

Then again, with three more seasons ahead for the bulk of this crew, the best might be yet to come.

“We’re coming for the SEC championship this year. I know when I was first considering Auburn, my high school coach was like, ‘Do you really think that’s the best opportunity for you?’ ” said Kemp, who also was considering Kansas State, Iowa State and Tennessee.

“I know it’s a growing program, and I really didn’t think it would be possible (to think about an SEC championship) until my junior year, and to be talking about it now is so amazing.”