2009-10 Coaching Changes

OK.  I have not even touched this blog in, oh, half a year.  I’m sorry for that … and I’m also sorry that I may not step back in here for a long time after that.

I write this because I started it and need to finish it.  It is the list of head coaching vacancies in all Division I schools … last year.  Not during this off-season, but the one previous.  Yeah, it’s useless now.  I wanted to be thorough in how I found out which colleges were searching for new head coaches, so I scoured by conference.  But that took so long that once I had to do something else (that something being something I now forget), I kind of looked at the conferences I still needed to sift for news and I mentally told me to put this blog post on the backburner and get to it when I can.

Uh, that time is now, a full year late.  Sorry.  I have little good excuse, and this article is nothing that will do anyone any good.  My intention was to write a definitive list of all the head coaching changes for the upcoming season.  And that is what I want to complete.  And so, here, very late, it is:

Air Force (contract of Penny Lucas-White was not renewed Nov. 23; replaced by Matt McShane, assistant coach at Cal, Jan. 26)

Austin Peay (Mike Johnson resigned to take the head coaching job at Xavier June 29; assistant coach Haley Janicek promoted July 9)

Ball St. (Dave Boos resigned to be an assistant at Florida Mar. 3; replaced by Steve Shondell, head coach at a high school[!!!] in Muncie, Ind. for 34 years [!!!], Aug. 3)

Boston College (Andrea Leonard “resigned” Dec. 3; replaced by Chris Campbell, assistant/associate head coach at Auburn, Feb. 3)

DePaul (Amy Hardison “resigned” Dec. 16; replaced by Nadia Edwards, assistant at Ohio St., Feb. 12)

Eastern Illinois (Alan Segal resigned Jan. 20; assistant coach Kate Price promoted, Mar. 1)

Georgia St. (contract of Mike Webster not renewed Mar. 3; replaced by Tami Ores, associate head coach and recruiting coordinator at Maryland, Apr. 14)

Houston (Bill Walton “resigned” [after 24 years] Nov. 25; replaced by Molly Alvey, associate head coach at Ole Miss, Jan. 25)

Howard (Orlando Larracuente “resigned” Feb. 19; replaced by Dawn Barnes, volunteer assistant coach at Pitt, Jun. 14)

James Madison (Disa Garner “resigned” Dec. 15; replaced by Lauren Sauer, assistant coach and recruiting coordinator at Kentucky, Jan. 25)

Louisiana-Monroe (John Schmidt resigned Nov. 27, effective Jan. 1; replaced by Ernest Vasquez, assistant coach at Kent St., Feb. 12)

Loyola Marymount (contract of Steve Stratos not renewed [after 20 years] Dec. 2; replaced by Tom Black, head coach at Div. II UC-San Diego, Jan. 19)

McNeese St. (Dale Starr leaves to be head coach at Robert Morris Apr. 13; replaced by Terry Gamble, head coach at junior Midland Lutheran College, May 7)

Nicholls St. (Chris Laird “resigned” Jun. 21; replaced by TeAna Tramel, assistant coach at Washington St., Jul. 28)

N.C. St. (Charita J. Stubbs fired Dec. 1; replaced by Bryan Bunn, associate head coach at Baylor, Feb. 19)

North Texas (contract of Cassie Headrick not renewed — announced Dec. 1, effective Jan. 31; replaced by Ken Murczek, assistant coach at Kansas, Jan. 19)

Northwestern St. (Brittany Uffelman resigned Nov. 19; replaced by Hugh & Stephanie Hernesman, assistant coach/recruiting coordinator and volunteer assistant coach, respectively, at Ball St. – [I don't understand how husband-wife co-head coaches ever work], Dec. 22)

Pacific (interim coach Dave Johnson … did not have the interim label taken off his title and thus was let go Nov. 25; Greg Gibbons, associate head coach at UC-Santa Barbara, hired Jan. 28)

Robert Morris (for the life of me I can’t find a page anywhere announcing that Rob Thomas was replaced; why is that?  Did something happen?  Is there something shady going on?  He still has a page on the RMU website with phone number and everything.  Replaced by Dave Starr, head coach at McNeese St., Apr. 14)

Southern Miss (Ricci Luyties left to become head coach at Div. II UC-San Diego Mar. 22; assistant coach Abbey Sutherland promoted, May 13)

St. Francis (NY) (Another Northeast Conference school, another empty paper trail about why the previous coach is gone; Lucy Liriano was the coach but “stepped down” sometime in the spring.  Unlike at Robert Morris, I can’t find a page for Liriano on the St. Francis website, so no link, sorry.  Replaced by Micah Acobah, head coach at John Jay, Jul. 7)

Towson (Paul Koncir “resigned” Nov. 24; replaced by Bruce Atkinson, head coach at Hawai’i-Hilo, Feb. 26)

UCLA (The big one: the legendary Andy Banachowski, basically the only head coach the Bruins’ woman’s program has ever known, announced on Jan. 11 that he was retiring when his contract ended Jun. 30; replaced by Mike Sealy, associate head coach at Hawai’i, Feb. 10)

West Virginia (After becoming head coach after the Mountaineers’ first year in existence and staying for 35 years, Veronica Hammersmith announced on Jul. 23 that she would no longer coach the team and would retire after serving out her contract, which ended — well, today, Jun. 30, 2011; replaced by Jill Kramer, assistant coach at Virginia, Aug. 10)

Winston-Salem St. (OK, this is weird: Douglas Hunter was the coach, but at some point in the off-season, he was no longer the coach.  No press release, and I can’t find a reason why, although here’s a bio on WSSU’s website; replaced by Lataya Hilliard-Gray, who, get this, not only coached the team once before but is also the school’s softball coach [and has been since 2002].  These HBCU’s need to keep costs down, I guess, but then again … if volleyball’s played in the fall and softball in the spring, it kind of fits, doesn’t it?  Anyway, I have no idea when she got hired, as there is no press release or news story I can find for this announcement either)

Xavier (After 20 years, Floyd Deaton resigned — though it’s not clear if he “resigned” – May 4; replaced by Mike Johnson, head coach at Austin Peay, Jun. 28)

Youngstown St. (Follow me here: Joe Bonner was fired Nov. 14; replaced by Chad Esposito, assistant coach at Charlotte, Dec. 23; resigned due to homesickness [well, I don't really know, it's just a guess, but what else could it be?] Jan. 15; replaced with Krista Burrows, head coach at NAIA Walsh University, Jan. 25)

2010 Tournament — Chronological List Of Sweet Sixteen Games

I am so, so, very, very sorry I haven’t written for this blog in a long, long time.  I still love women’s volleyball, still.  But I’ve been concentrating on my other writing and blogging projects, as well as trying to find a job that actually pays.  I’ve had to prioritize.  But to be honest, I didn’t let LOL? go by the wayside; rather, I just … kind of forgot it.

Until the tournament, of course.  And it’s still kind of late because the NCAAs started last weekend.  Plus, I have no time to analyze what happened, at least not here.  But let me try and give you something.  I’m going to chronologically list the eight regional semifinal games — all of them playing on Friday – just so you know who’s playing when.  Meanwhile, keep following the beautiful NCAA interactive bracket for up-to-the-minute scores.

Edited to add that I have found, I hope, that the NCAA is streaming, for free (I believe) all eight Sweet Sixteen games today, right here.  I have also linked to local feeds — audio, video and otherwise:

• 4 p.m. EST: USC (6) vs. Indiana (audio)
• 5: Duke (12) vs. Missouri (audio)
• 6: Florida (1) (radio) vs. Purdue (16) (audio)
• 6: Stanford (3) vs. Ohio St.
• 7: Penn St. (4) vs. Oklahoma
• 8: Cal (7) vs. Minnesota (10)
• 8: Illinois (8) vs. Texas (9)
• 10: Nebraska (2) vs. Washington

Conference Players Of The Year

I’m sorry this is coming in so late; these announcements were made the weekend before Thanskgiving.  I had the idea of doing this at the start of the tournament and things just got, um, busy till now.  But even though the news is more than two months old, the accolades still stand, so I’m going to post the Players Of The Year in each of the 32 Division I conferences.

America East: Brooke Stanley, Setter, Jr., Albany

Atlantic 10 (tie): Lindsay Fletemier, Middle Blocker, Jr., Dayton; and Sammi McCloud, MB, Sr., Saint Louis

ACC: Brianna Barry, MB, Sr., Florida St.

Atlantic Sun: Alex Kelly, Middle Hitter, Jr., Lipscomb

Big 12: Destinee Hooker, Outside Hitter, Sr., Texas

Big East: Meagan Dooley, MH, Sr., Pittsburgh

Big Sky: Nique Fradella, S, Sr., Portland St.

Big South: Kelley Taylor, Right Sider, Sr., Winthrop

Big Ten: Megan Hodge, OH, Sr., Penn St.

Big West: Rebecca Saraceno, OH, Sr., UC-Santa Barbara

Colonial: Holly Goode, MB/OH, Jr., George Mason

Conference USA (tie): Visnja Djurdjevic, OH, So., Tulane; and Jennifer Eichler, OH/Opposite Hitter, Sr., Tulsa

Great West: Kayli Broadbent, MB/OH, Jr., Utah Valley

Horizon: Beth Greulich, OH/MH, Sr., Cleveland St.

Ivy: Elizabeth Semmens, OH, Sr., Penn

Metro Atlantic Athletic: (uh, they don’t award a Player of the Year; instead, they give out POYs for offense, defensive, setting, etc.  I don’t know if I like this, but here’s the link)

Mid-American: Ellen Herman, OH, Sr., Ohio

Mid-Eastern Athletic: Jovana Blazeski, OH, Jr., Florida A&M (no page just for her — it is an HBCU conference after all)

Missouri Valley: Bre Payton, S, So., Northern Iowa

Mountain West: Danielle Minch, OH, Jr., Colorado St.

Northeast: Svetlana Simic, OH, Sr., Long Island

Ohio Valley: Stephanie Champine, OH, Sr., Austin Peay

Pac-10: Hana Cutura, OH, Sr., Cal

Patriot: Ariana Mankus, OH, Fr., Army

SEC: Brittnee Cooper, MB, Sr., LSU

Southern: Kelsey Salava, S, Sr., Furman

Southland: Chloe Smith, RS, Jr., Central Arkansas

Southwestern Athletic: Brittany Larkin, OH, Jr., Jackson St.

Sun Belt: Yarimar Rosa, OH, Sr., Florida International

Summit League: Chrissy Knuth, MH, So., North Dakota St.

West Coast: Ali Troost, RS, Jr., San Diego

Western Athletic: Kanani Danielson, OH, So., Hawai’i

1/27/10: Regional Sites Announced For The Next Two NCAA Tournaments

Yesterday the NCAA announced the sites for the third and fourth rounds of the 2010 and 2011 NCAA Tournaments.

Next year the schools hosting the regionals are Penn St., Dayton, Texas and Washington.

The following year the sites are Florida, Minnesota, Kentucky and Hawai’i.

This year the hosts were Florida, Minnesota, Nebraska and Stanford.

Tournament — Championship Recap

Oh my God, I am so sorry that I haven’t updated this!  I was too busy writing this for my other website, SportsAlert, and I forgot to copy it here, and then all the Christmas stuff happened and I had to do something else … again, I’m sorry.  But here is my article in full about what should go down as The Greatest Championship Match In Women’s College Volleyball History:

As anticipated this matchup was, the game turned out to be better than anyone expected.

While the women’s college volleyball national championship game pitted the #1 team all year, Penn St., against the #2 team all year, Texas, recent history showed that the title game wouldn’t necessarily be an epic.  However, Saturday night’s match in Tampa was only the second match in the last nine years it went the full five sets.  And when it was over, it rightfully took its place as The Greatest Women’s College Volleyball Championship Game Ever.

Penn St. captured its third consecutive title and its 102^nd straight victory, but never before did they have to come all the way back from a 2-0 deficit.  Such a lead should give a team as good as the Longhorns a certain victory, but the Nittany Lions used a reservoir of resiliency and poise they hadn’t had to tap in almost three years in order come back and be the first v-ball program ever to three-peat.

“It’s something that is gonna be hard to describe,” Setter Alisha Glass said after winning a third straight title.  “This was what we wanted from the beginning of the season.  I think you saw that in the match.  We just would not let it go, so we are really happy that we came out here and got what we wanted.”

Such a thought seemed almost impossible to believe after intermission.

Both squads came out of their corners giving each other their best shot.  The best teams are able to go on mini-runs, and the caliber of the match was set when both teams were able to string points together – a four-point run by Texas, a four-point response by Penn St.  Streaks are what finished the first set.  The Nittany Lions took five consecutive points to go up 22-19, a run in which Texas Head Coach Jerritt Elliott burned both of his time outs.  The second one did the trick, however, as the Longhorns roared back behind the serve of Setter Ashley Engle to take the last six points and the set.

The last two points were terminated by Destinee Hooker.  The First-Team All-American, and All-Tournament Most Outstanding Player, was doing her best Vince Young impression, leading the team with five kills in Set 1 on 12 attempts for an Attack Percentage of .333.  Meanwhile, Megan Hodge, who earlier in the week was named AVCA National Player of the Year for, guess what, the third year in a row, was locked down.  She had only one termination out of eight total attempts and wound up -.250.

Hooker and the Longhorns kept kicking the Nittany Lions while they were down in the second set.  At one point, the Outside Hitter and brash, emotional heart of Texas accounted for nine of the set’s 13 points.  Eleven of Hooker’s match- and career-high 34 kills were in Set 2.  And the Longhorns led by as many as eight points several times before finally closing it out, 25-20.

Nittany Lion Libero Alyssa D’Errico was one of the players tasked with digging out Hooker’s bombs.  “[Hooker] has a variety of shots and was mixing it up with tips, roll shots, hitting both sidelines and deep.  It’s definitely something that is really tough to defend when she can hit all the shots and she has such great vision from a high contact point.”

It really looked like the USC football run several years back.  The writers gave the Trojans the title in 2003 and they ran the table in 2004, but the historic run was stopped by Young and Texas in the 2005 Rose Bowl.  Here, it looked like Hooker and her ballers were unstoppable, and Penn St. looked shocked and tired.  Rarely do you see any team come back from a 2-0 set, especially if the final margin of victory swells from the first to the second set.  Yet, Penn St. Head Coach Russ Rose said his team didn’t need to regroup: “I talked and I think they understood what was necessary.  They needed to play harder.”

This game was so close there really isn’t a turning point, but if forced to find one, you’d do no worse than in the middle of the third set, when Penn St. outscored Texas 6-3 to push a three-point lead into a six-point lead.  Outside Hitter Darcy Dorton buoyed the team while Hodge was getting on-track.  Meanwhile, Rose changed the blocking scheme so that Hooker’s swings were saved by D’Errico and Defensive Specialist Cathy Quilico.  Hooker got seven kills, but that was on 18 total attempts, meaning an Attack Percentage of .278.  And Penn St. stood up to Texas, outlasting a late run to win Set 3, 25-23.

Hodge finally became the leader Penn St. needed her to be in Set 4; she got half of the team’s 14 kill shots in that set.  Hodge solved Elliott’s blocking pattern and got her spikes to hit the ground instead of the forearms of Longhorn Libero Heather Kisner.  Special recognition should be given to Kisner.  She was cleaning up for her teammates like she was the only one sober after an all-night kegger and then was told by her parents that they were coming home half a day early.  Kisner led all players with 26 digs – and a facial.  And it’s a shame she wasn’t named onto the All-Tournament Team.

Hooker, hooting and hollering as the team was firing on all cylinders, was much less extroverted after the intermission.  She had six kills in the set, but on 22 swings, resulting in an Attack Percentage of .182, her worst set in the game.  Nevertheless, Texas wouldn’t go away.  At one point down 9-4, they battled all the way back to a 22-20 deficit, only to see the Nittany Lions take the final three points (the final one by Hodge), win the set, and climb all the way back from the abyss to even the match.

“I think we stunned Penn St.; they definitely weren’t playing their usual match,” said Engle, Texas’ Setter.  “We knew coming out of the locker room that they were going to be on fire at the things we were being successful with.  They came out swinging; we didn’t battle back the way we should have.”

So on they went to the fifth and final set, a 15-set epilogue to cap four enthralling 25-point chapters.  (Surprisingly, none of the five sets of this memorable battle went to extra points.)  A set this short can get out of hand quickly, but as it turns out both teams saved the best for last.  The Longhorns made one final stand, taking two-point leads of 3-1 and 7-5.  Hooker hit .429 with five kills.  But look at the box score of the last set; while Elliott went all-in with Hooker, Rose and Setter Alisha Glass was able to spread the Nittany Lion attack to Hodge, Dorton, and Middle Hitters Arielle Wilson and Blair Brown.

All year long it was Texas stalking Penn St. – second in the AVCA Top 25 poll, second in overall record, second in the minds of volleyball experts as to who’s the best.  In the last set of the season, however, it was the Nittany Lions playing from behind.  This is where they showed the toughness, the smarts, and the chemistry – and the luck – that has made them the ladies of the volleyball court.

Arielle Wilson rose up in the center of the net and slammed the ball down on the Texas side of the court, finally giving Penn St. a lead at 12-11.  But the net was shaking wildly, as if it was freezing cold inside the St. Pete Times Forum.  Elliott and the rest of the Longhorns wanted a net violation, but upon further review, it was the ball, and not Wilson’s hand, that disturbed the net.  What’s that they say about hard work making its own luck?

After Elliott’s ensuing time out, the worm permanently turned for Texas.  They managed to tie it at 12 when Brown hit her serve into the net, but Penn St. got to Championship Point on a Dorton spike and an attack error by … Hooker.  Engle’s kill pulled one back, but on the final point, Glass teed it up for Hodge at the antenna for the middle-of-the-court game-winner.  Such is the cruel ironies of volleyball, and of life, that Hooker, the engaging and brash senior who singlehandedly took her team to within one set of the school’s second v-ball title, would see her hopes of winning a championship shank out of bounds off her left wrist.  Just as ironic to see Texas repeat their collapse of a year ago, when they lost to Stanford in the Final Four after leading two sets to none – only this is worse, since this was for it all.

“You want to put everything out on the court,” Hooker said after the game.  “Like the seniors (Engle and Kisner graduate alongside Hooker) were saying in the locker room, go out and give it your all, and I’m glad to be able to play my last game with this group of girls.  They’re great.”

There really is no statistical advantage that gave the Nittany Lions the victory.  Although both teams had better Attack Percentages for the sets they won, it actually was Texas with the better percentage for the match, .251 to .234.  Both teams were built on defense and blocking, and both played superbly; Texas had one more dig, Penn St. two more blocks.  If there is anything to point to, it’d be service errors.  While the Nittany Lions came into the match averaging one more service error for the tournament, the Longhorns committed 14 of them to Penn St.’s eight.  In a game where both teams wound up scoring 107 points, those six free points represent six blown chances to end a dynasty.

Yet, it seems a minor quibble in retrospect.  This is a game where even the losers should, eventually, feel proud that they played in one of the greatest championship games in recent college sports history.

“It’s an honor,” said Juliann Faucette, Texas’ Outside Hitter who will have one more shot to win that elusive title.  “Like Coach said in the locker room, this feeling is not very good right now, but down the road, we’ll realize how special it really is and that we got to this game and we fought.  It’s just an awesome feeling to really look at it in perspective.”

Added Engle: “It was great … the finals the last couple of years have been 3-0 and not super exciting.”  “There are a lot of great volleyball players out there on the floor.  We gave it our all and they gave it their all, too.  It didn’t go our way unfortunately, but it’s a match I will never forget.”

Neither will those of us who were able to watch this instant classic.  Congratulations to Penn St. for making it three in a row.  Congratulations to Texas for being a worthy opponent and then some.  And thanks to both teams for one hell of a game. 

Tournament — Championship Game Preview

This.  Is.  It.

Number 1 vs. Number 2.  Not since the 2006 Rose Bowl have two teams, clearly a cut above all the rest, met in a title game seemingly every expert in the sport knew that they and only they would be invited to.  In the blue corner is Penn St., two-time defending champion, winner of 101 consecutive matches, and the top team in almost every scale measuring achievement and strength in women’s college volleyball.  In the orange corner is Texas, very clearly the second-most accomplished team of the year but 1st (over Penn St.) when it comes to the most powerful metric in the sport, the RPI.  Identify almost any statistic and they are indistinguishable from each other, and they both would be leading the NCAA in that category.  While the Longhorns have clearly chased the Nittany Lions in the AVCA Top 25 Poll and everything else, the two best teams all year meet this Saturday night for it all.  Hide the women and children — this is big girls’ territory.

And I do mean big.  This is going to be giants against giants, and whoever wins the net game — getting their spikes over defenders and blocking shots by jumping up so high the net looks like it gets raised by a foot — will win the championship game.  For comparison’s sake are four tables comparing players that may be lining up against each other:

College	Name	Position	Height	Kills/Set	Hitting %	Blocks/Set
Penn St.	Megan Hodge	OH	6’ 3”	4.69	.386	0.68
Texas	Destinee Hooker	OH	6’ 4”	4.97	.361	0.85

 

College	Name	Position	Height	Kills/Set	Hitting %	Blocks/Set
Penn St.	Darcy Horton	OH	6’ 2”	2.37	.283	0.59
Texas	Juliann Faucette	OH	6’ 2”	3.23	.290	0.68

 

College	Name	Position	Height	Kills/Set	Hitting %	Blocks/Set
Penn St.	Arielle Wilson	MH	6’ 3”	2.80	.549	1.55
Texas	Rachael Adams	MB	6’ 2”	1.78	.484	1.08

 

College	Name	Position	Height	Kills/Set	Hitting %	Blocks/Set
Penn St.	Blair Brown	MH	6’ 5”	2.98	.352	0.93
Texas	Jennifer Doris	UTIL	6’ 5”	1.40	.375	1.15

 

While experience counts for a lot, another reason I’m sticking with Penn St. winning this game in four sets is that the Nittany Lions have a fifth big up front in their rotation: 6′ 3″ MH Fatima Balza.  Texas might counter by bringing in two freshmen, Bailey Webster and Sha’Dare McNeal.  What they should rely on, however, is their man advantage at Setter; Ashley Engle and Michelle Kocher will have to control the ball and tee it up in a way that keeps Penn St. on its heels and toes.  If Texas can absorb the blows and counterattack, they’ll have a good chance to win.  Also, Destinee Hooker might have to step up and regulate on her own.  I believe she is able to take the Longhorns on her back and take them to the promised land — just like another Texas leader, Vince Young, singlehandedly defeated top-ranked USC in that ’06 Rose Bowl.

Again, statistically the two teams are quite similar; Penn St. and Texas are 1-2 in Hitting Percentage.  There are two small anomalies that could play big if the match is close.  The Nittany Lions are averaging half an ace more than the Longhorns in the tournament, and that could give them the two-point cushion to close out a set.  However, they are also averaging about a full service error more than Texas, and they are too good of a team not to take advantage of a Penn St. serve into the net.

I can’t wait.  The game starts tonight at 7 CST.  It’s being broadcast on ESPN2, and I plan on watching it at a Hooters.  If you’re not at a TV then, you can follow it online; here is Penn St.’s video broadcast and here is Texas’ audio feed.

Let’s do this!

Tournament — Final Four Results

The fundamental, incontrovertible fact about women’s volleyball is this: You can’t teach size.

That was demonstrated repeatedly, sometimes emphatically, in the two national semifinal matches in Tampa played Thursday night.  And the inevitable comes to pass: The two best teams in the nation, one stalking the other since the season began all the way back on Labor Day Weekend, will meet for it all Saturday night.

Second-seeded Texas swept 11th-seeded Minnesota, 19-20-15.  The defense that got the Gophers through to the Final Four was overwhelmed by Texas’ height and power as the Longhorns hit .400 for the match.  Destinee Hooker led all with 17 kills, and the two-headed set monster of Ashley Engle and Michelle Kocher successfully set up 41 of the 44 Longhorn assists.  Also, Heather Kisner‘s match-high 21 digs were key in holding Minnesota’s Attack Percentage to .160.  Hailey Cowles was the only Gopher with double-digit terminations at 12.  And Taylor Carico led all with 30 assists.

Meanwhile, Penn St. lost a set for the first time in the NCAA Tournament (and first since Nov. 20), giving up the first one to 12th-seeded Hawai’i 25-23.  However, the top-seed Nittany Lions shook that off and exploited their height and strength at the net on their way to storming the Rainbow Wahine, 18-15-18 and winning in four sets.  The most important stat in this game?  Blocks: Penn St. had 15 … and Hawai’i had absolutely none.  This despite the Bows holding the Nittany Lions down to a mortal Attack Percentage of .276.  The best attacker Penn St. had was probably Alisha Glass; although she had only nine kills, she was completely clean error-wise, giving her a team-best .692.  (Three Nittany Lions did reach double digits in spikes.)

The other thing that stood were the number of players on both sides that reached double digits in digs.  Alyssa D’Errico‘s 19 was the most in this match, but while she led two other Penn St. players, Hawai’i had five double-digit diggers, led by Elizabeth Ka’aihue and her 18.  By the way, Kanani Danielson led the Rainbow Wahine with 14 kills.  Let it be said that Hawai’i Head Coach Dave Shoji installed the best strategy he could and he got the best out of his club, especially when it came to defense.  At the end, like Minnesota to Texas, the Rainbow Wahine just got beat by a bigger team.

These two matches could tell us a lot … or it could tell us nothing.  Both squads finally repelled smaller and undersized opponents, but while Texas had no trouble dismissing Minnesota, maybe Hawai’i being able to take a set from Penn St. means that the Nittany Lions are vulnerable after all.  Or, it could just show that Penn St.’s system is just a tad more favorable to quicker, craftier teams, which Texas is not.  Maybe in a game of strength on strength, size vs. size, the Nittany Lions will excel.

I will say one thing: I look forward to the chess match.  This is a season where parity definitely was in hibernation, and a title match where a team that was first wire-to-wire throws down with a team that was second wire-to-wire is a true clash of the titans.  Can’t wait till tomorrow.

Tournament — Final Four Preview

Can the Rainbow Wahine, fresh off proving the NCAA Selection Committee wrong by being one of the last four teams standing despite being scarred with the 12 seed, now prove everybody wrong and shock the world?

Can the Gophers continue their miracle run and show that the hottest team can win it all?

Or is a Lady Lion-Longhorn final a formality?

The best college tournament of the fall season – and it’s not the BcS National Championship Game because Boise St., Cincinnati and TCU got screwed – concludes in Tampa this weekend.  The women’s volleyball Final Four consists of the two best teams of the season (Penn St. and Texas), the third-best team according to the weekly polls but given the 12 seed by the NCAA Selection Committee for the tournament (Hawai’i), and a surprise club that is getting hot at the right time (11^th-seeded Minnesota).

Here is the tale of the tape for each of the two semifinal matches Thursday night.  I copied the table format I used because this is originally an article I published under my other employer, SportsAlert, and I’m tired of figuring out how to center all the stuff, so I apologize for the tables not looking all that good:

Texas	7 EST – ESPN2; listen	Minnesota
28-1	Overall Record	28-8
19-1 (1st in Big 12)	Conference Record (Finish)	15-5 (3rd in Big Ten)
2	Seed In NCAA Tournament	11
2	Rank In Latest AVCA Poll	11
1	RPI	13
Destinee Hooker, OH (4.95 kps) Juliann Faucette, OH (3.23 kps) Ashley Engle, S (8.86 aps) Michelle Kocher, S (6.06 aps) Heather Kisner, LIB (4.00 dps) Rachael Adams, MB (1.10 bps) Jennifer Doris, UTIL (1.17 bps) Sydney Yogi, DS (1.95 dps)	Rotation(kps = kills per set) (aps = assists per set) (dps = digs per set) (bps = blocks per set)	Lauren Gibbemeyer, MB (3.33 kps) Tabitha Love, OH (2.65 kps) Taylor Carico, S (10.7 aps) Christine Tan, LIB (3.86 dps) Hailey Cowles, DS (2.73 dps) Jessica Granquist, DS (2.4 dps) Megan Wilson, OH (1.15 kps) Ariana Filho, MB (0.91 bps)
Jerritt Elliott (213-63 at Texas, 263-75 overall)	Coach (Record At Current School, Record Overall)	Mike Hebert (356-126 at Minnesota, 928-383 overall)
Control net; Tee it up for Hooker	Keys	Defense; Carico must be superb

 

Penn St.	Approx. 9 EST – ESPN2; listen	Hawai’i
36-0	Overall Record	32-2
20-0 (1st in Big Ten)	Conference Record (Finish)	16-0 (1st in WAC)
1	Seed In NCAA Tournament	12
1	Rank In Latest AVCA Poll	3
2	RPI	22
Megan Hodge, OH (4.75 kps) Blair Brown, MH (3.0 kps) Alisha Glass, S (12.02 aps) Alyssa D’Errico, LIB (3.47 dps) Arielle Wilson, MH (1.55 bps) Cathy Quilico, DS (1.83 dps) Darcy Dorton, OH (2.38 kps) Fatima Balza, MH (1.43 bps)	Rotation(kps = kills per set) (aps = assists per set) (dps = digs per set) (bps = blocks per set)	Kanani Danielson, OH (4.25 kps) Aneli Cubi-Otineru, OH (3.08 kps) Dani Mafua, S (11.81 aps) Elizabeth Ka’aihue, LIB (3.74 dps) Brittany Hewitt, MH (1.39 bps) Stephanie Ferrell, OH (2.62 kps) Amber Kaufman, MH (2.46 kps) Stephanie Brandt, S (1.23 dps) Jayme Lee, DS (0.95 dps)
Russ Rose (963-159 at Penn St., 999-159 overall)	Coach (Record At Current School, Record Overall)	Dave Shoji (984-173-1 at Hawai’i, 984-173-1 overall)
Avoiding complacency; 3-peat	Keys	Use deep rotation; Ball control

Tournament — Final Four!

The last four survivors in top-flight women’s college volleyball include the two best teams all year and a team that was ranked third in the polls but not regarded as the third-best team according to the NCAA committee.  But I want to talk about the local team, the Minnesota Gophers, maybe the unlikeliest team to make it to the Final Four since Santa Clara went from unseeded to the last weekend five years ago.

I was wrong.  I’ll admit, I was wrong.  They had a chance to get to Tampa because they got to host the regional and faced a suspect Florida St. team and a not-so-hot Washington squad.  But they themselves weren’t firing on all cylinders and their top player left the team late October.  Plus, they had to face Big East tournament champion Louisville in the first round and subregional host Tennessee in the second.  I thought there was a good chance that not only would they not make it through their regional, they wouldn’t even get to their regional.

And again, I was wrong.  They looked very good in system in beating Colorado St. Friday night in four sets, then showed up with overwhelming force as they took out the third-seeded Seminoles in four Saturday.  Their defense was great, notching 73 digs and holding FSU to a .179 attacking percentage.  Outside Hitter Tabitha Love killed 21 times and was named the Minneapolis Regional’s Most Outstanding Player.  She was great, but I would’ve given it to Taylor Carico, whose setting and leadership has stabilized this team.  Meanwhile, the Seminoles’ Setter to start out the match, Duygu Duzceler, seemed as out-of-sorts as she did against Kentucky Friday, teeing it up poorly and far away from the net.

I am concerned over the Gophers’ apparent lack of focus in dropping Set 3 both games.  If they really put the hammer down, they could’ve really sent a message by sweeping both matches.  Suffice it to say, such spacing out won’t cut the mustard against Texas, who won the Omaha Regional/Mini-Big 12 Conference Tournament by defeating 10-seed Nebraska three sets to one.  The RMOP is Longhorn OH Destinee Hooker, who gathered 18 kills.  Texas, the 2-seed the whole season, is the first team to defeat the Huskers three times in the same year.  And even though it is good that Nebraska ticked a set off the Longhorns, the fact they they rolled comfortably in the next three by allowing only 18, 16 and 17 points, bodes ill for Minnesota in the National Semifinal.

Of course, the only team that’s doing better than Texas is the Penn St. Lady Lions.  Cal’s a good team — they were seeded ninth in the tourney and played in the rugged Pac-10.  And yet they too were flattened by quite possibly the Best Team Ever, 18-17-22.  The Lions attacked at a .337 percentage.  OH Megan Hodge is the Gainesville Regional MOP for killing 14 shots in the match, but the scariest thing about this team is the balance.  Libero Alyssa D’Errico had five of the team’s eight aces, and Middle Hitter Fatima Balza had half of the group’s 10 blocks.

This victory is the team’s 100th straight, and it also is the 999th win the career of Head Coach Russ Rose.  The team even made ESPN’s “SportsCenter.”  They had a graphic breaking down their 100 wins.  Did you know that 90 of those wins are sweeps?  Even more ridiculous, they have won 300 of their last 315 sets.  That’s 95.2%.  This isn’t the Penn St. women’s volleyball team — this is the Borg.  Resistence Is Futile.

And what to make of Hawai’i, deemed a 12-seed, after they blitzed 13th-seeded Michigan, 23-19-18?  The AVCA had the Rainbow Wahine third in their Top 25 poll for most of the season, after Penn St. and Texas.  Yet the NCAA committee evidently took into account that this team ran the table against the WAC, which had no other squads in the tournament and is considered relatively weak.  (In fact, Hawai’i has won or shared the conference title every year since joining the WAC in 1996.)  Add the fact that their only two losses were to #2 Texas and St. Louis in a very powerful field for their Wahine Volleyball Classic, and they were judged to be only the 12th-best team in the tournament, behind teams from the Big Ten, Big 12 and Pac-10.  Their run through the bracket, topped by their three-set win over a very good Wolverines squad, shows that at least for them this year, the committee blew it.  The three best teams in the country made it to Tampa.  By the way, the Most Outstanding Player in the Stanford Regional is the Rainbow Wahine’s Kanani Danielson.  The OH had 11 kills in the regional final.  And Hawai’i makes it to the Final Four for the ninth time in program history and its first in six years.

The Final Four also provides yet another answer to the question of who the best conference in the country is.  Before the tournament started it was the Pac-10, whose eight invitees led all.  After the first weekend it was the Big 12, whose five surviving teams surpassed all the others.  And now the answer is the Big 10, with Penn St. and Minnesota representing at both ends of the bracket.

Congratulations to legendary Head Coach Dave Shoji and Hawai’i, but good luck standing up to Penn St.  And while I love what Minnesota has done, they’ll have to prove me wrong again as they face the almost-equally overpowering Texas team.  This is a great Final Four, but the final matchup between the Lady Lions and the Longhorns still feels inevitable.

Preview coming Wednesday!

Tournament — Elite Eight

So glad I was able to get tickets to the regional games at the University of Minnesota’s Sports Pavilion tonight.  Great crowd watching great volleyball, including the Game Of The Night, Florida St.’s five-set victory over Kentucky.

To me, five-set matches are kind of like a baseball game in that, if you look closely and carefully, the narrative of the game changes as you go along.  It’s kind of like chapters in a book – the theme of the game morphs, characters grow in stature, the tone shifts from sludgy to thrilling, etc.  So it was fascinating to see momentum ebb away and flow to each team.  Kentucky started out gangbusters, putting the pedal to the floor and just outracing Florida St. to the end of the first set, 25-16.  The Seminoles were stalking the Wildcats throughout the second set but caught up and surpassed them at the end to win 26-24.  It seemed as if Kentucky blew their wad trying to storm out to a 2-0 lead and thus were blown out of the water, 25-17, in the third.

It’s at around this point, where the underdog captures the first set and loses a very close second, that the game becomes a rout and the dog loses, like, 25-1 in the fourth set.  Not so with the Wildcats.  They did trail 8-4 in the fourth set, but the Wildcats ripped off an inspired 17-6 streak to dust FSU, 25-19.  And it was back and forth in the fifth and deciding set before a service ace on the Seminoles’ third match point gave them the game and a trip to the regional finals for the first time in program history.  I’m surprised that this match went back and forth and back again.  I’m also surprised to have seen both teams rip off multi-point streaks.  Didn’t think that would happen between two of the last sixteen teams in the tournament.  But the real conclusion from the game, and in particular that fourth set, isn’t that bad teams allow streaks, it’s that good teams are good enough to go on streaks.

Still, 3rd-national seed Florida St. will have a whale of a time against 11th-seeded Minnesota, which needed four sets before dispatching Colorado St. Most of the time their play leavened my heart; if they play the way they played often during this match, they can stand toe-to-toe with anybody.  But the set they lost, the third, concerns me.  Unlike last year, when I saw the Gophers get upset at home in the second round to Iowa St., never did I think they just lost their game.  But they lost 25-23 partly because they kept committing errors and did not chain their hits together crisply.  They can’t space out and be that sloppy against Florida St.  But again, nothing from the first game convinces me the Gophers are going to get blown out of the water.  In fact, they have a fairly even chance of getting to the Final Four themselves, a big difference being that they are playing in front of their home crowd.

Then again, playing at home didn’t help Stanford.  The national four-seed Cardinal were victims of a 3-1 upset at the swings of 13th-seeded Michigan.  The Wolverines will make their first-ever Elite Eight appearance.  They attacked at .358 and four players got double-doubles, led by Alex Hunt‘s 18 kills and 14 digs.  They will face the winner of the fourth and final match to not be a sweep tonight, Hawai’i.  Although ranked third in the AVCA Top 25 the last three-quarters of the year, they were given the 12-seed.  Guess they showed who by defeating national 5-seed Illinois in four sets.  This match was unusual in that the Rainbow Wahine lost the first set and won the next three.  What also may raise eyebrows is that the Illini scored only 10 points in the second set and 16 in the fourth and final set; teams fall apart, they don’t take certain sets off.  So it’s Michigan against Hawai’i in the final of the Stanford regional.  Plenty of seats will be available, I’m guessing.

Same with the Gainesville regional.  Penn St. has made it 99 matches now and counting after being rude guests and sweeping Florida of its home floor, 12-18-21.  Four players finished with double-digit digs, and the Lady Lions finished with an attacking percentage of .454.  They face nine-seed Cal, 3-0 winners over Baylor, 24-20-17.  Outside Hitter Hana Cutura and her 18 kills led the Bears in their defeat of the Bears.  Both winners have reached the Elite Eight for the third straight year.

And what of that sort-of incestuous roundelay in Omaha, Neb., where all four participants are part of the Big 12?  Conference balance may not be a priority when laying out the bracket in women’s volleyball, but this was ridiculous.  They need to change this so that something like this doesn’t happen again.  Anyway, Texas continues to roll, routing rival Texas A&M in three, 18-18-21.  OH Destinee Hooker hit .465 and notched 23 kills, helping take the Longhorns into the fourth round for the fourth consecutive year.  Meanwhile, 10-seed Nebraska kind of upset 7-seed Iowa St. in three sets, 11-19-22.  The Cyclones committed 22 errors; their lifetime record against the Huskers is now 1-77.

To sum up: None of the unseeded teams were able to continue their Cinderella run and three lower seeds beat higher seeds, two of them in the Stanford regional.  None of the regional finals feature the two-best teams in that regional.  And to answer the questions I asked in my last post: Not nasty at all; kind of, but the Pac-10 is in danger of completely missing the Final Four; a very definite possibility; and two teams.

The Final Four will be filled tonight.  All games Central Standard Time:

• 3: Penn St. (1) vs. Cal (9) — listen
• 5:30: Florida St. (3) at Minnesota (11) — track
• 8: Texas (2) at Nebraska (10) — track
• 10:30: Hawai’i (12) vs. Michigan (13) — listen on Honolulu’s ESPN radio affiliate

You can also see these matches on ESPNU, but good luck finding that on any person or bar’s cable or satellite network.