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Pac-12 in the NCAA Volleyball Tournament

Your so called ramblings are awesome, in my opinion! Your analysis is always really helpful and I really appreciate it. I don't understand all the specifics yet of volleyball but learning.

i do hope stanford goes all the way. Represent the Pac! But still glad CSU lost! :)



AztecBuff said:
Well- Washington is beat by Nebraska 3 sets to 1 (losing 29-27 in what must have been a heartbreaker for the home crowd in the 4th set). So, only Stanford is left to represent the Pac 12.

Looks like the Big 10 will be crowing again this off-season, although I'd say the Pac 12's depth is still greater. Overall, pretty good distribution of conferences in the 8 teams playing tomorrow evening- Big 10- 3 teams, and the following with one team each- Pac 12, WCC, ACC, SEC, Big 12.

Although I'm sure it means nothing to the losing players right now, be interesting as a volleyball fan to see how this effects the player of the year discussion. Like many college sports, volleyball is "infected" (I hate the concept) of almost always awarding their Player of the Year award only to players on teams who make the final 4. (I believe the vote is this coming week.) So, it's NOT really a player of the year award, it's the best player on the best team award, often a VERY different thing. Anyway, the main Pac players thought to be in the conversation for player of the year are K. Vansant and K. Lowe. Hope both are still considered for the award in spite of today's results. If not, reading the volleytalk forum, and assuming the voters DO almost always pick only players from final 4 teams, the Player of the Year award may come down to a winner take all match tomorrow night in one Elite 8 match with the two other main favorites (along with K. Vansant) going head to head, setter Hancock for Penn State facing off against setter Carlini for Wisconsin.

Edit- Did want to apologize for taking over an allbuffs thread for my (usually) general volleyball ramblings. Hope all but the few general volleyball fans were able to successfully ignore all this.
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Az, I think the last decade has shown greater depth in the Big10 actually, with fewer Pacific-Coast programs excelling and I'm not sure why the change occurred. Mick Haley (USC's coach, former UTexas coach and US National coach) has said club-attendance is half in the south-half of Calif (his territorial limit, he claims, is SF Bay's border). That's club-attendance in the 12-18 year range, the prime development and recruiting areas.

But in the Big 10 areas, club attendance has been flat for a decades but has risen in Big Cities only - which isn't unusual. Something else is going on in the farmlands, though. And I'm beginning to suspect it's that Killer Server mentality, where isolated groups of players (30-60-90 miles from another group of players) may have Service Skills as their only solo skill-set to develop. Finding someone that willing to practice killer-serves for years, by themselves, may be that reason. But the success in the national leagues with Big 10-area servers seems to be ubiquitous.

A program like Penn State has lost - what? - 20 matches? 25? - in the last decade since they started making Final Four appearances. And while they fattened on a weak Big10 for the first half of that time (whereas no Pacific Coast program could 'fatten' even off the lower-div programs), the corn-fed 7-foot 400-lb milddle blocker farmers started spreading thru-out that conference (OK OK, there weren't THAT many 7-ft 400-lb'ers... it just seemed like they were everywhere).

Neb was really the only middle-America program at first and for some reason Penn State joined in and then all of the Big 10 has participated in severe beatings of each other and everyone else.

These schools are doing little with Pac Coast talent, too. They are almost all conference-centered recruits. Where'd they all come from? And in a relatively short period of time, too. Aliens? May be.

I'm also not sure why the demise of VB along Pac Coast clubs is occurring. Mick's only been there for ?? 20 years ?? and this is the first downturn he's seen, but other veteran coaches say it's cyclical. Loyola, Pacific, Pepperdine, Hawaii and so many smaller programs (Cal State-Sac, a 3rd-tier recruit destination used to be 2nd-choice... now #3... UC-Irvine, Long Beach may be all facing the same population limits). It's strange. Is it economics? Have the clubs priced themselves out of the masses? Could be, too... it was like the hippest prep-schools for a while with parents elbowing their ways into the chic clubs.

Finally, Florida has spoken up. UF under Coach Mary's been pounding the ball for a long time, but FSU, Miami, UCF have been minor players, lucky to get invites once every 4 years or so. Now, maybe the state of Florida and its regions are flexing some muscle.

I am not convinced that the Pac-12 was strong, actually. A couple of good teams but I thought everyone else 'fell down' or stepped down, and some of the lower-tier programs appeared 'better' in that downward trend. It's a blasted shame we don't have teleporters all over so we could see 200 matches a year merely by walking in one door and out another - poof! - in a different part of the world.
 
So, here's the schedule for tonight's 4 Elite 8 matches. As can be seen, all 4 matches are back to back on ESPNU, so if like me you don't get that channel as part of your cable/ satellite package, you're out of luck getting to watch the matches. (I'd be missing the 1st two matches anyway- Go Tad and team this afternoon/ evening!) The lone remaining Pac team's (Stanford) match begins ~7:00 Mountain time. (Note- The below times (from the ESPN website) are Eastern time):

4:00 PM EST#5 Penn State vs. #4 Wisconsin ESPNU


6:30 PM EST #7 North Carolina vs. #2 Texas (Regional Final) (NCAA Women's Volleyball Championship) ESPNU


9:00 PM EST #8 Florida vs. #1 Stanford ESPNU


11:30 PM EST BYU vs. #14 Nebraska ESPNU
 
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I thought UW did in fact suffer from Setter-itis, although she can't help the bad passes she was getting. Still, she relied on quite a few bump-sets instead of taking an extra step and using a 2-hander, which is far easier for hitters to predict where the ball's exactly going to be.

Also... I was watching BYU's struggles. They are rather infamous for losing their two opening games and then coming back and sweeping the next 3 for Match Wins. Nine of those playoff games in the last 20 years - the opponents get lazy after two wins, sit back and give away Game 3, then discover they can't re-connect for Game 4 and get swallowed by the BYU momentum in Game 5. If BYU had suffered that fate last night, I'd have merely checked it off as "finally-just desserts". But no, they had a good come-from-behind win after a Game 3 loss to win the match 3-1. If they make it into the Final Four, there might be some consideration toward pushing for them, the underdog but also perhaps the hottest team of all. VB's a game where emotion and momentum can mean so much, and the Big Teams might have a few deflated moments and never rise back.
 
buffgal said:
So far Wisconsin, Texas and Stanford are in the Final Four.
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Buffgal- One correction- Penn State defeated Wisconsin. And, to finish off this weekend's storyline- BYU swept Nebraska last night, so we have an unseeded team into the Final 4!

So, this coming Thursday, in Oklahoma City, it will be Stanford vs. Penn State and BYU vs. Texas in the two matches to determine who will play for the national championship on Saturday.

The Stanford v. Penn State match is the match that many volleyball fans would have pointed to going into the tournament (H*ll- going into the season) as THE most anticipated match of the tournament (assuming of course they managed to beat their other tough opponents). They are historically THE two leading volleyball programs, with each having earned 6 championships since the NCAA started sponsoring the tournament in 1981. Last year, Stanford gave Penn State by far their biggest challenge on their way to their 5th championship in 7 years. In a regional final match, Stanford led I believe 9-6 in the deciding 5th set, but Penn State roared back to win 15-11.

In the other match, can the unseeded team continue its run? Led by two great hitters (Alexa Gray and Jennifer Hamson (a multi-sport athlete who was also a 2nd round WNBA draft pick this year)), many in the volleytalk forum are giving BYU a pretty good chance against Texas. However, Texas did not get the overall #2 seed from charity, and their incredible athletes (led by THREE time Big 12 Player of the Year Haley Eckerman) will provide BYU their biggest challenge yet.

For anyone interested, here is a link to stories for all the Elite 8 matches- http://www.ncaa.com/sports/volleyball-women/d1 .
 
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Orr said:
Buffgal! Are you paying attention here?
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Do I flunk? :huh:


Apparently not! I watched that match. Perhaps my cheering for Wisconsin was still in my mind. I knew Penn State won.

I was impressed with BYU and how they easily beat Nebraska.
 
buffgal said:
Do I flunk? :huh:


Apparently not! I watched that match. Perhaps my cheering for Wisconsin was still in my mind. I knew Penn State won.

I was impressed with BYU and how they easily beat Nebraska.
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Just wanted to make sure you saw Aztec's post.
 
If anyone wants to watch, unseeded BYU is up 2 sets to none to #2 seed Texas on ESPN2.
 
17-16 Stanford leads in the third set tied 1-1


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
So, It's Penn State over BYU in a sweep for the championship. 1st 2 sets (especially 2nd) close, while 3rd was an easy PSU win. Someone has to come up and challenge them (GO BUFFS!)- that's I believe 6 championships in the last 8 or 9 years.
(I think PSU is so deep, they had two (???) Top 10 nationally ranked incoming freshmen this year they were able to red shirt because they didn't even need them.)

Maybe they need to play the Connecticut women's basketball team in some neutral sport so at least one of them know what it's like to lose a big game/ match.
 
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