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BadgerHorn

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  1. Alright, I have thoughts. Just got back from the Long Beach tournament. CSB - After the win vs Nebraska, I ran into Coach Metzger. I'm one of those people who assumes famous/public figure types aren't interested in shooting the breeze with the plebs, so on the rare case I do engage, I'm careful to be quick. I was just going to say hi and congrats on his first dual win, and let him continue on his way. He stopped me for a few mins to talk - was interested in my ties to UT and the beach team, we talked AVP a bit, I told him how exciting it was to have him and Coach Akers on campus. We went our separate ways. [a few hrs later] After their last match concluded Sat, I was watching one of the other matches going on. Coach walks by, we make eye contact, and we do the mutual head nod. He takes a few steps past me, stops, walks back to me and asks "What did you think about the team's performance today?" So you have an Olympian and an American beach volleyball great asking me, a guy who's skins on the wall include a few BB level bar league titles and the occasional 0.500 season at A level, what I thought. We talked a bit about the pairing changes, the struggles on the first court, the late start to the season, etc. I apologize to this forum for missing the opportunity to send him the link to this thread for all the answers. I take the blame for any future losses. Either way it was a cool experience - I'm not a parent of one of the girls; I'm not a BMD; I'm not a high school or club coach with a hotshot recruit. Just a UT grad who loves beach volleyball and traveled out to see the team play and he took the time to engage. Also got to speak briefly to Coach Akers. Looking forward to seeing what those two can build at UT. On to my thoughts: The bad news: We're young and starting the season a few wks later than most teams. So many signs of youth and limited chemistry: Too many marriage balls / balls falling between the girls on serve receive due to miscommunication Simple defenses. We're line blocking almost exclusively - at least in the matches I saw. On Sat, a few teams started mixing things up. You usually keep it simple when 1) you're not confident your defender will read and react to blocking calls correctly or 2) the game is moving too fast and you don't have the ability to process everything going on in addition to identifying opponents' patterns that you can exploit via defensive calls. The few times I saw us try angle or show blocks, maybe 1/3 of the time it was executed well and 2/3 they were late or out of position. I wish we'd be more aggressive (but smart) on sending free balls. There's a difference between floating an easy ball that they'll return in system at a 99% clip and a ball you purposely drop in between them, drop within 5', or push to the back line where you might cause some issues 10% of the time. The set is to 21, but it's usually one or two points that lead to a win or loss. I don't see a clear #1 on this team We're weak at the #1 and #5 spots. That means you need to sweep 2-4 to win a dual. It's like our team is out of tweener casting. Everyone is 5'9" - 5'11" aside from Robertson at 6'1" and Devin. Makes for good split blocking and defender reach, but not much in the way of blocking intimidation on this roster. It would have been nice to put some of them behind Molly as a true blocker. Those uniforms… I still don't like the big white stripe on the back. And I could go on about the Macho Man glasses everyone seems to be wearing the past few years. I don't get it. The good news: This team with mostly beach players is night and day from last year. Aside from Madi, Molly, and maybe one or two others last year, this team is way more fluid on the sand, quicker to get down and up, and more well rounded skill-wise to play beach. No more littles who can't side out or bigs who are a huge liability in serve receive and setting… Ok, "no more" is too strong, but we're in much better shape. There are still some lopsided scores, but I didn't see anyone that looked unnatural on the sand like we saw last year. It seems like the coaches are teaching the girls how to scout opponents in these tournament environments. The girls are still young and there's an element of seriousness/business that will have to be built to reap benefits from that studying. It seems snack time can occasionally take priority over scouting… but I noticed similar from some of the LBSU girls who are very good. Keep forgetting many of them are still teens. Depending on the lineups, we can put together very competitive teams in the 2-4 spots Hashman and McClockey have some pretty mean serving when dialed in. Not tallying a bunch of aces, but can put the opponent in a bind. Wright/Ogden and Butler/McCloskey are fun duos to watch. Lots of live arms and Wright seems to have some fight/grit/spunk to her I didn't see the notes about the scores being messed up until too late. I hate trying to read my phone in the bright sun. If memory serves, the had issues keeping the teams straight at this tournament last year too. It looked like they had extra players and LBSU communications majors running the scoring. Who's going to be at TCU?
  2. Anyone else going to be onsite for the opener at Long Beach?
  3. I think we may have sleuthed together the entire schedule ourselves in the posts above
  4. Me figuring out my AVP travel plans: Saw this on Volleytalk and volleyball mag, but nothing on the AVP website. They can't get out of their own way
  5. Lots of compliments for Molly
  6. The Weds 20 Mar event in Austin with HCU includes Washington as well.
  7. https://beachpackagingdesign.com/boxvox/bread-loaf-lunch-box
  8. Thanks for posting. Props to Molly for taking on that level of competition. I think USC has four players with at least AVP main draw experience, not to mention the string of national championships. Looking forward to the beach schedule release.
  9. Loving every point. Only downside are the reviews and service errors.
  10. https://texassports.com/news/2023/12/14/intersport-fox-sports-announce-major-annual-volleyball-showcase-beginning-labor-day-weekend-2024.aspx Looks like a fun Labor Day weekend. Texas, Wisconsin, Stanford, Minnesota playing in Milwaukee.
  11. I haven't seen it explicitly mentioned, so I just assumed she was working through something minor. I believe she had foot/ankle injuries in HS. Hopefully this is not a continuation of that as she has a lot of potential... personally I think she has some potential in beach with her measurables, hands, and blocking, but that's a different topic. Main thing that would have concerned me about her inability to jump set is that, now, when she does jump, it's an indication that a dump is probably coming. I guess it's quick and rare enough that defenses haven't been able to or felt the need to spy that correlation. They say the other advantage of jump setting is you can contact the ball higher and, therefore, reduce the flight time of the ball - especially, by percentage, in the middle of the court. Her height mitigates a good deal of whatever is missed there. And personally, I think that part of jump setting is overblown. To me, the threat of an attack is 10x more impactful than any time savings you might get.
  12. Only way this matchup could be better for me is if it occurred one round later. Really excited to see these teams go at it. I regret that I haven't been able to watch either team as much as I would have liked this year, so take that into account with my below quick assessment: Captain obvious: Wisconsin has a ton of height this year and their front leads the way. They also have what I'll call a sneaky good back end - not pulling the end of season awards, but a bunch of talent right below that All-conference level. I see this as a 55 UW / 45 UT match. We've been saying all year that this UT team has flaws, but they also have high end ability / volatility that can easily push them past what might be a better team on paper. Franklin is NPOY good (and Madi may not be far behind her), but Madi has the ability to take over a set and carry a team in ways Franklin doesn't - or at least has not had to. I kind of want to see if Madi can OT Smrek. Asjia vs Booth should be a fun matchup. My keys for a UT victory: - Captain obvious again: you need Madi to have a big match. Captain less obvious: that doesn't necessarily mean a 20 kill outing. It may mean 1) drawing UW's defensive attention to open up opportunities for Asjia, Molly, Jenna 2) getting critical kills / sideouts from the back row 3) stepping up the back row serve receive / defense - Ella is going to need to be on point to keep the Wisconsin blocks moving/guessing (I'm looking at you Asjia) and to put her hitters in position to maximize efficiency. - To me, UW's TTA is analogous to Wenaas in that her performance in a 50/50 type matchup can tell you which way the tide will turn. Keep an eye on these two. - UW's serve receive can be shaky at times. Akana/Halter/Barnes may be able to sneak a few points this way. I think the folks upthread did a good job of explaining why NCAA WVB tends to be chalky. Two other considerations: - Due to highly lucrative pro FB and MBB careers, there's a stronger incentive for higher end talent to move around to maximize exposure, creating more parity. - Specifically for volleyball, the scoring system tempers the amount of upsets/volatility. In basketball, if a lower seed gets really hot and puts up a 25-5 run or something, you need to overcome all of that delta the rest of the game. In volleyball, if a team has an awful set and loses 25-8, aside from the mental impact, there's no difference in that and losing the set 25-23. Just run it back the next set.
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