News About Other B1G Teams and Their Players

The ACC strikes again with their poor volleyball coverage. But this time a more egregious one IMO. A top-10 match up, Purdue vs. Kentucky is not being streamed or televised just cause the home institution isn't involved. Get it together ACC...

Minnesota beats Wisconsin 3-2...now we root for Purdue to beat Minny on Saturday

I watched the MINN vs WISC match yesterday. I found it interesting that WISC (6-3) was ranked #7 going in and MINN (7-3) was ranked #18. The only difference is that WISC lost to TX, STAN and Louisville and MINN lost to STAN, TCU and Baylor. BUT, WISC only beat Baylor and TCU in 5 and MINN lost to TCU and Baylor in 5. And MINN has a big win vs TX and WISC doesn't have a big win.  Yet WISC is #7 and MINN #16. Goes to show you how perceptions of a team factor in the ranking.  ( I know, these rankings mean nothing ).

MINN hit .024 in the 1st set (and lost it to no one's surprise), hit over .289 in the 2nd and won it, hit .375 in the 3rd, AND LOST IT. How do you hit .375 in a set and lose it? WISC hit .325 in the 3rd and won despite allowing MINN to hit .375.

The hitting by the two teams was totally different. Franklin, Smrek and Orzol for WISC had 47 of the WISC 56 kills. Franklin hit .294 (21-4-57) and Smrek hit .171 (13-7-35). (I don't understand how you can be 6'9" (Smrek), be athletic, which she is, and hit .171. Orzol hit .109 (13-8-46). So even tho Orzol had 13 kills, you really didn't want to go to her in crunch time. The two WISC middles hit .000 (5-5-23).

MINN on the other hand had a more balanced attack; their one middle (Awoleye) hit .400 (5-1-10) and the other middle (Minatree),hit .375 (11-2-24). MINN's pin hitters hit .163 (17-9-49) (Grote), .186 (15-7-43) (Hanson) and .310 (12-3-29) (Acevedo). Not great, but evened out by the MINN middles. One of MINN's starting pins, Wucherer, has been injured, played a small bit of set 1 and was ably replaced by Acevedo.

MINN won the match 19-25, 25-15, 25-27, 25-15, 18-16.

MINN lost the 1st set decisively, won the 2nd decisively, and was ahead in the 3rd for the first 2/3 of the set and then lost. MINN won the 4th decisively, and almost lost the 5th when ahead by a bunch. MINN was ahead in the 5th 12-7, WISC came back a bit and MINN was up 14-11. WISC then tied it at 14, 15 and 16; then losing it 18-16. Great comeback by WISC but just didn't have quite enough to win it.

It's amazing that WISC was able to come back like they did. My rule of thumb in 5th sets is that when a team gets down by 3, the game is usually over. The team that is down starts pressing and making errors. Good teams can come back and thru experience and poise (thank you 96psu). WISC showed a lot of heart coming back after being down so much.

I was going back over the match and wondering what WISC passing and setting had to do with the poor hitting by WISC. The passing by WISC, in general, seemed to be decent. I thought the setting by Fuerbringer was decent as far as the placement went, but didn't fool MINN at all. As I said before, how do you be 6'9" and hit .171? I'm guessing that the connection between Smrek and her setter isn't the greatest. (Frankly, I like Izzy a lot more than Fuerbringer at this point in time). I'm not the greatest as far as critiquing setters so I welcome any other opinions/viewpoints.

I thought that WISC was a more balanced hitting team, but then again, I haven't followed them that much to be able to judge one way or the other. Obviously I was wrong.

In the years that Taylor has been at PSU I've never seen as good a connection with a setter as she has with Izzy.

I just watch the replay of NEB vs UCLA in Nebraska. NEB won 3-1, 25-22, 25-10, 23-25, 25-22. Set 1 was close; UCLA within a pt most of the match until the end. UCLA got destroyed in the 2nd set; score was NEB up 15-8 and then NEB out-scored UCLA 10-2 to win the set.

The 3rd set was especially interesting. NEB was up 8-4, 10-6, then 15-8. Looks just like the 2nd set. Then NEB up 17-10, 22-14. Then UCLA went on a 10-0 run to get to match pt. THEN, the UCLA player served into the net. But UCLA ended up winning 25-23. (The announcers mentioned that NEB, in an earlier match, had given up an 8-0 run and still won the set. Rather unusual.)

During that run, the UCLA block was fabulous; they had 5 blocks during that run. Anna Dodson is a middle on UCLA who is really good. She had 8 blocks for the match and only hit .227, but had periods where NEB was really hard pressed to stop her.

Taylor Landfair came in for Lyndsay Krause 2/3 of way into first set as Krause was hitting -.143 (1-2-7). Landfair ended up hitting .414 (13-1-29). But Beason only hit .103 (9-6-29) and Harper Murray only hit .086 (9-6-35).

So what's with the pins of NEB? They hit pretty crummy for the match. BUT, they're hitting pretty crummy for the season so far.

I looked at the overall stats for NEB for the current year, not including the UCLA match; somewhat surprising (at least to me). Their middles are fabulous. (UCLA held Andi Jackson to .409! In prior matches she was averaging over .500).

For the season so far the middles are hitting:
Andi Jackson hitting .500 (110-18-184)
Rebecca Allick hitting .388 (62-17-116)

And here's where the surprises are, for the OH's for the season so far:
Merrit Beason hitting .224 (114-43-303) - last year averaged .282
Harper Murray hitting .220 (125-44-368) - last year averaged .237

Beason is a highly touted transfer, Murray is a highly touted recruit. I'm not sure of Krause's history. It's looking like Taylor Landfair might be saving the bacon of the NEB pins as she's the only pin that is hitting a decent percentage.

NEB has great defense this year, as usual, and their transition play is quite good also. The setting of oos balls almost always was in a good location where the pins could get a good attack out of it.

Now, this is a very cursory look at the NEB pins, as I haven't watched the NEB team all that much and there could be mitigating circumstances for the various players. But it will interesting to me so see how the NEB pins develop this year and how their hitting as a whole does.

The NEB offense reminds me of the WISC team as they both are not well balanced; NEB depending on their middles, Allick and Jackson, whereas WISC is depending on 2 pins, Smrek and Franklin (in the WISC match against MINN, Orzol had 13 kills, but only hit .109).

Like lionsfan, I wanted MN to lose because if they really are as competitive as they looked vs. Wisconsin, we need them to get some losses here and there to keep them off the B1G podium. So I wasn't thinking about RPI but instead who wins the B1G.