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Post by jojonito on Sept 1, 2021 1:51:05 GMT -5
I watched the Wisconsin - Baylor match. Wisconsin was very impressive. Wisconsin won 25-16, 25-7, 16-25, 25-16. Wisconsin let up a bit in the 3rd, but other than that they manhandled (or womanhandled  ) Baylor, in spite of Avory Skinner tranfering in from Kentucky. Baylor was outhit, .165 to .325, out aced, 7 to 0, out blocked 10 to 8. Baylor's a decent team and didn't play that badly, but couldn't put the ball down and obviously had problems in passing/receiving. Not infrequently you will see the less skilled team with more digs, but Wisconsin out dug(digged?) Baylor 49 to 48. The Wisconsin middles, Danielle Hart and Dana Retke, hit .538 and .591 respectively, so it's clear that Wisconsin was passing well most of the night. No other Wisconsin hitters were over .300 but when their middles both hit this high along with 48 combined attacks, they don't need to. I haven't watched Wisconsin enough to tell whether the other Wisconsin hitters normally hit in the .200's, but, if this was a low night for the other hitters, watch out!!! PSU will have problems with Wisconsin' serving if Wisconsin serves this well against PSU and PSU's passing doesn't improve. All in all, Wisconsin was quite impressive. The only other "good" team that Wisconsin is playing in pre-season is Kentucky, ranked #3, which I think is a bit high considering that Kentucky lost 3 starters, one of which is their libero. Kentucky is 3-0 at this time, but haven't played any ranked teams yet. I would expect Wisconsin to take Kentucky quite easily. Kentucky plays Stanford in the pre-season along with Wisconsin, so we'll find out soon enough how good the Kentucky team is. |
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Post by jojonito on Sept 1, 2021 2:21:30 GMT -5
I watched the Florida vs Stanford match on Tuesday night. Quite an interesting match. Stanford won 26-24, 25-18, 17-25, 25-23. The 2nd game wasn't as close as it appears as Stanford was up 23-14 at one point in time. It was a somewhat strange game. Florida came out and was playing really good; their blocking was good, their digging and overall defense was excellent for the first 2/3 of the match. Florida was up 19-15 and Stanford went on a 3 point run to make it 19-18. Then Florida went on a 3 point run to make it 22-18. Then Stanford went on a 4 point run to tie it up. Florida made it 23-22 and Stanford tied it up. Florida made it 24-23 and Stanford made another 3 point run to win the match 26-24. It was so strange as up to 19-15 Florida looked to have the game in hand, but Stanford turned up the heat and won. Florida totally lost it in the 2nd set. Their defense went down the tubes, their hitting along with their serve receiving also went down the tubes. Stanford jumped out to a 6-1 lead; and increased their lead to 10-4, and from their went to 14-6. It seemed that everything that Florida did well in the first set, they did poorly in the 2nd set. Florida got their act together in the 3rd set, and I think, Stanford let up a little. Their were times when the Florida block was dominant, but they weren't consistent with it. Stanford had 11 service errors and Florida 8, but it seemed like the Florida service errors were at important times in the match and consequently hurt Florida more than the Stanford service errors hurt them. Florida was outhit .250 to .254 but that wasn't an indicator of how close the match was. From watching this match, I think that Stanford is gonna be a team to be reckoned with. They still have some rough edges, (a freshman setter will do that), but as the season goes on, they are going to be quite good. I thought that it would take them longer to "show up", since they were in the same situation (or worse) as PSU last year, and haven't had much time for team chemistry to build. Also, Florida had a distinct advantage over Stanford in that they played fall volleyball 2020, spring volleyball in 2021 and now fall volleyball in 2021 (same advantage that Texas has had). Texas will play Minn and Stanford in the pre-season and it will be interesting to see how those matches go. It's quite interesting that the standard stats aren't a good indicator of how close a match is. I've seen some matches that were not remotely close and then looked at the stats and wondered, "The game wasn't anywhere nearly that close". Course, that why Russ Rose has his own stats. He doesn't care how many digs a player gets; rather how many digs did a player get compared to the number of possible digs the player could have gotten. That goes back to the second episode of "Gotta Love Russ" on Netflix  (Thanks to Nyline). Q: I have always wondered if you keep your binders. What happens to the contents of those at the end of a match or a season? “Yeah, I have 40-plus years of those — practice ones as well as match statistic ones. We could have a really big fire." Russ never takes himself too seriously. |
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Post by jojonito on Sept 1, 2021 23:24:10 GMT -5
I just watched the Texas vs Minn match on 9/1. Texas won 26-24, 25-21, 21-25 & 25-22. Minn was up 21-13 in the first set and then Texas went on a 4-2 run to make it 21-17 Minn. Then TX went on a 6-0 run to tie the match up, and won it 26-24. Taylor Landfield had a lot of kills early in the set but couldn't buy a kill later in the set. Samedy was blocked at 23-21 Minn up and after that was pretty tentative. TX tried to give the set to Minn but Minn just wouldn't take it . TX had 4 service errors and at least 4 attack errors in the first set. But MN couldn't get a kill when they needed it. The 2nd set was close most of the way, TX and MN trading the lead, neither team up by more than 2 points. Then after MN had gone on a 2 point run to tie the game at 21-21, TX went on a 4 point run to finish out the set. MN played well in the 3rd set hitting .394. to .019 for TX. MN was up 7-2, 18-12, 20-14 and then TX closed to with 22-20. But MN was able to pull out the match 25-21. The 4th set was probably the best set. MN was out hit .216 to .146 but the match was close all the way. One thing the Hugh did that didn't make sense was that he put a substitute in at about the 20-20. She was set immediately, no chance to get loose and was blocked. She was then serving a bit later when TX was up 23-20 with a topspin serve. She got the first serve in and MN won the point. Surprise, surprise, she put the next serve into the net, which I figured she would. Steve Sunderland has a pet peeve about players being put in cold into a match and being immediately set. In his experience, it seldom works out well. Also, why would Hugh put in a topspin server who hasn't served much at all in the match, (if at all, I don't remember), at a time when you can't afford a service error? Don't get it. Texas played reasonably well, but I wasn't all that impressed with them. TX had a number of bumps sets that ended up close to the net or over the net. They also had a number of situations where the ball went down because of overall confusion. Most of TX is upper classmen so one would think that they would have it together. TX had 15 service errors with 7 aces. Melanie Parra, a girl from Mexico, had 4 aces. She has a really tough serve. Announcers said that she is idolized in Mexico. TX setting wasn't great. The TX middles had a good night hitting .458 and .333 with a total of 42 attempts, but the OH didn't do well. Eggleston was 17-7-55 and hit .182. It will be interesting to see the Stanford vs Texas match next week. Samedy, Landfair and Wenaas got the majority of attemps, hitting .236, .075 and .229 respectively. MN seemed to overly depend on Samedy which is a problem since she can sometime be shutdown. Course, against a good blocking team, just about any hitter can be shut down as PSU showed when playing Tarah Murrey and Cal in the 2010 championship. The roster says that Samedy is 6-2 but she seems to be shorter than that to me. I think that MN is gonna have some trouble this year unless some of the other hitters step up. McGraw, the MN libero, played really well. MN had trouble blocking the hammers on TX. As usual, TX has a lot of good hitters. By the way, the announcers were talking about Adanna Rollins move to PSU during the broadcast. It appeared that with Rollins having two more years of eligibility, MN didn't have the scholarships for her/decided not to spend 2 years of scholarship on Rollins. Cuz elsewhere it was mentioned, (a RR press conference I think), that RR had talked to the coaches of each of the girls that transferred in to see what kind of players/character they had. RR also mentioned that he's not big on transfers into the PSU program, which could be why other programs get a lot more transfers than PSU does. |
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Post by pennstate1973 on Sept 2, 2021 7:37:46 GMT -5
I think it's a mistake to rely so heavily on Samedy. Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't. The inconsistency is getting the backset to the right location. But then someone might ask me how many teams I coached to Olympic medals.
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Post by traveler on Sept 2, 2021 10:28:42 GMT -5
I watched the Florida vs Stanford match on Tuesday night. Quite an interesting match. Stanford won 26-25, 25-18, 17-25, 25-23. The 2nd game wasn't as close as it appears as Stanford was up 23-14 at one point in time. .... I only looked at the stats. But I was struck that the closest stats were in set 4, where FL held The Cardinal to the mid-100s. But they couldn't capitalize. They (FL) have a very tall MB...6'6" who seems to be quite a force. |
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Post by jojonito on Sept 2, 2021 14:45:51 GMT -5
I forgot to mention that Texas, along with Florida, played fall volleyball in 2020. So both these teams had a big (not B1G ), advantage over the B1G teams in that they have had a lot more time/experience on the court. I think this might have contributed to Wisc's loss to Texas in the NCAA semifinals along with the lack of out-of-conference matches to high quality teams. As I think many have mentioned, this really hurt the PSU women's volleyball team as they had quite a young, inexperienced team and really needed all of the game experience that they could get. In spite of that, PSU played Texas the best of any of the B1G teams. Oh well, as we know, RR doesn't believe in moral victories, as opposed to many of us . On a different note, Northwestern's women's lacrosse team lost to Syracuse rather convincingly in the NCAA semifinals in 2021. NW's lacrosse team in 2021 was really good but the lack of playing high quality teams really showed. I think that the lack of out-of-conference play by NW really hurt them as the women's lacrosse level in the B1G in 2021 wasn't that high, so not being able to play virtually any teams in top 10, (other than Maryland who wasn't that good), was quite detrimental. |
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Post by jojonito on Sept 2, 2021 14:59:34 GMT -5
I only looked at the stats. But I was struck that the closest stats were in set 4, where FL held The Cardinal to the mid-100s. But they couldn't capitalize. They (FL) have a very tall MB...6'6" who seems to be quite a force. What's with the tall middles/players on Florida? Rachel Kramer, 6'8', graduated in 2017 and they also have a 6'7" RS player on the roster at this time. Oh for the days of Katie Slay . (Not that I'm complaining about the quality of the middles at PSU). |
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Post by jojonito on Sept 5, 2021 15:50:59 GMT -5
Texas vs Stanford. Texas won in 3, -22, -16, -23. I have to eat crow on this one. I thought Stanford was better than they were and that Texas was worse than they were. In the first 2/3 of the 1st set, Stanford was better. For the rest of the match, Texas was better. Texas closed out the 1st set on a 9-3 run. Stanford had issues with errors thru-out the match. At the end of the 2nd set some stats were: Kills Stanford 29 TX 24 Hitting Errors Stanford 11 TX 4 Serving Errors Stanford 8 TX 5 Aces Stanford 1 TX 7 Stanford had a lot of errors. Stanford was up in the 1st set 19-16 but had 3 service errs and 3 Attack errs at that point. So they were ahead in spite of themselves. Then Texas turned it on. Stanford couldn't handle the serves from Texas. A lot of aces and a lot of out-of-system balls. Asjia O'Neal had 3 aces in a row at one point. Stanford couldn't stop the Texas hitters virtually at all. Stanford had 5 blocks but very few touches. Soft blocks make the backrow's job so much easier, but Stanford was getting very few of those. Stanford's blocking reminds me of some recent PSU teams. Decent stats, but not much overall effectiveness. Texas hit .299 and Stanford .255. The middles for Stanford hit -.286 and .222. They only had 16 attempts combined. Plus, there were very few attacks for Standard from the right side. The only bright spot for the Stanford offense was Kendall Kipp, who hit .476. All of the other hitters for Stanford hit .250 or under. A final comment: the crowd at Texas was really annoying. They were loud all the time, even when their team was serving. The difference between this Texas crowd and the Nebraska crowds was huge. We may dislike Nebraska, but their fans are very knowledgeable. (Someone will say, with an average fan age of 65 they should be. Just kidding.) I got the impression that a lot of the fans were Texas fans not volleyball fans; that they were there because Texas was playing a well-known team, not because they wanted to see good volleyball. Very annoying. (I know, how did I really feel? ) P.S. Stanford's blockers weren't recognizing where Texas's set was going to go. Their middles were fre quently late to the block or not there at all. With Texas's quality of hitters, that's fatal. However, Stanford is a work in progress. They will get better. Be interesting to see where they end up. I thought it was interesting that Minn took a set from Texas while Stanford didn't win a set. |
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Post by jojonito on Sept 5, 2021 20:43:46 GMT -5
One point I forgot to make was that Brionne Butler was virtually invisible. She hit .077 on 3-2-13 hitting. O'Neal, Texas' other MB hit .600 on 7-1-10. Granted, TX didn't go to the middle that much, but Butler can be awesome at times and I totally forgot about her as her name was hardly mentioned. Could have been the rotations.
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Post by traveler on Sept 6, 2021 9:38:12 GMT -5
JO: Does your family miss you during WVB season? lol.
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Post by nyline on Sept 6, 2021 13:03:26 GMT -5
JO: Does your family miss you during WVB season? lol. Jojonito has the admirable skill of being able to bend the space-time continuum so as to be in two places at once. Cosmic officials almost never call this cosmic "double touch." |
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Post by jojonito on Sept 6, 2021 17:15:50 GMT -5
JO: Does your family miss you during WVB season? lol. Nah. I just don't have a life. Besides, you got me mixed up with Ethan. I don't know how he finds time to do all that he does and have a job along with it. He's sort of like Karch. Sunderland called him a volley-dork. He never tires of watching volleyball or talking about it. Except that Ethan is a PSUVolley-dork. Thanks Ethan!!! |
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) Baylor, in spite of Avory Skinner tranfering in from Kentucky. 
(Thanks to Nyline).
