(Learfield Sports) — The University of Iowa volleyball team is in its final week of preparation for the upcoming season. Boyd Shamansky is in his fifth year leading the team. “There’s two things that I know at the start of every season. One is that we are going to be better than the year before, and two is that we have a lot of different parts. It’s been an enjoyable preseason for us and now we are at T-minus in getting our team ready to go out there and compete,” Shamansky says.

He says finding out how all the parts fit together is key before they get to the Big Ten season. “It’s the strongest conference in the country, but this year more than ever it’s very different,”Shamansky says. “You have teams that were toward the top last year that graduated a lot of starters. Probably a case in point — Michigan State graduated their entire starting lineup. That’s pretty rare when that happens.”

Shamansky says his team should be able to take advantage of the changes to improve their standing. He says when he first took over they were constantly at the bottom of the league and the last few years have been holding in the eight or nine spot. “Now we need to make another step forward.”  He expects them to take some momentum from their success that last two years. “Back-to-back winning seasons seep into the way that players think of themselves. How they carry themselves, how they train, the discipline that they have, but also just the belief when they go out there and expect to win when they play,” Shamansky says. “It takes a while to convince them that that is what they are capable of. And my belief is not nearly as important as theirs. And when they believe in themselves and each other they tend to get things done,” Shamansky says.

Iowa opens the season August 25th against S-M-U in Nashville, Tennessee.