Match Thread - PSU @ Northwestern - Sun 11/17 - 2 PM EST

Good point.  Along with this is the way that our hitters are set.  Just about everybody is being set from various positions.  The middles from the outside, the OH hitters from either the right side or left side, Jonni from the anywhere in the back row. Since we don't have any dominant OH hitters, the variety of places that hitters are hitting from in order to make it more difficult for the opposing front line to figure out where the attacks are coming from. I've seldom seen players being set from so many different places (granted, I haven't been watching volleyball nearly as long as some).  As somebody else has said, this may be one of the best jobs of coaching RR has done in a longtime. It's always easier to coach a really talented team than a team that doesn't have as much talent. Not to say he doesn't do a great job with good teams as the following anecdote shows.

Christa Harmotto Dietzen was talking about the 2007 season.  She still sounded exhausted recounting practices from 2007 -- the beginning of Penn State's four-in-a-row string of championships. "We lost all the time in practice," she says. "Monday to Thursday he would create these situations where it was really hard to win. He'd add his assistant to the scrimmage. ... He'd raise the net higher. He knew the potential of what we could handle, and he'd push the ceiling."   

 Penn State won an NCAA-record 109 straight matches between 2007 and 2010.

"He knew the potential we had, and if we were winning all the time in practice, I don't think we would have had that success," Dietzen said. "It was mentally grueling."

It shows how good a coach RR is, both in good times and not so good times.  (Doesn't this show how spoiled we are?  To have a team that is as good as this years team and to look at it as a down year?)