SL Xpress
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SL Xpress last won the day on August 7 2021
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I had some interactions with Marquette fans. To a person they tried to tell me I'm a bad person and UT is a bad employer for forcing him out, and he's going to do great things at Marquette. Caught a lot of flack when they won the Big East tournament and made it into the second round in his first year. Caught more flack when Beard was arrested. I haven't gone back to revisit any of those conversations, but if I had kept better tabs on them I would. Basically I guaranteed they'd fire him within 5 years. So next year. He's right on schedule as far as I'm concerned.
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I would like a few conference championships.
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I have no idea what you mean by that. You keep mentioning Parra, but she wasn't even part of the lineup for one of the best serving teams Texas ever had. I don't understand what your point of bringing her up is. It's not enough to hit it over the net. You have to put pressure on serve receive. If that comes with some service errors, that's a good trade off. The A&M player you're referring to is Megan Fitch. Whether they were lollipops or not, our players were shanking first contact regularly. My guess is her serves have some movement on them, which is the reason Morrison brought her in in that scenario. And it worked. Tough servers are the difference between a championship team and a team that loses in the Elite Eight. Tough servers not only contribute to winning, they are the KEY difference, along with the ability to receive serve at an elite level. But tough serving is not merely about velocity. And I don't know about being smarter than everyone else, but I'm beginning to suspect I'm smarter than you.
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I feel like at this point all of us should know what we're going to see with the game thread when we open it up. Caveat emptor and all that.
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What do you mean ouch. They scored more than 6. And it wasn't at home. This is improvement.
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That's a horrible analogy. Let's take those same ten teams again, and let's talk about how often they score in serve receive, in order: Nebraska 70% SMU 67.1% Stanford 66.3% Texas A&M 66.1% Wisconsin 65.9% Kentucky 65.8% Pitt 65.4% Texas 65.2% Arizona State 63.8% Louisville 62.4% ______________________________________________ What I'm trying to say is that getting it over the net isn't enough. You have to score. Now, you don't have to score a whole lot. You don't even have to score 50% of the time. You just have to score when you're at the service line more than the opponent does. But as I keep saying, by the time you get to the Elite Eight, all of these teams are really good at siding out, often times on the first ball over the net. Texas is excellent at this. This is the most critical statistic in all of volleyball. This list makes up 8 of the top 10 teams in the country in this category. Arizona State is 14th, and Louisville is 28th. But Louisville is ranked 5th in points scored from the service line, so that helps them. Remember, it's not about preventing the other team from scoring on their serve. It's merely about scoring more from your serve than the opponent does. ________________________________________________ What this means is that not all points are equal. So if a server hits a serve that puts the opponent on their heels, and Texas scores, but the next serve goes directly into the net, that's a positive for Texas. 50% points scored on a service rotation means Texas will almost certainly advance. Frankly anything above 40% means good things. I will admit that if a server is consistently hitting their first serve out of play - like what Nya Bunton will do on a consistent basis - then that becomes harmful, it doesn't matter how much pressure her serve puts on the opponent. And she leads the team in that category, even if she's one of the worst in terms of the service rotation being productive i.e. scoring (it doesn't help that she's terrible in defense on the back row - literally if it's hit at her it's basically an automatic point for the other team). It is not difficult to make sure every serve makes it in the field of play. Simply serve underhanded. It might not be 100%, but it would be awfully close. But no one does that. At any level of the sport. Why is that? Are coaches at every level just stupid? No. They understand they have to score points during their service rotation, and that's very difficult. _________________________________________________ Melanie Parra wasn't even in the service rotation on the 2022 national championship team. Her greatest value came on the practice court where the team had to learn to receive her serves. She's a bad example, since she wasn't utilized. Both the 2022 and the 2023 teams were murderer's row from the service line. The national championship in 2023 came in large part from the dominance of the Texas serve. I've also often said rating servers by their aces is not a great measurement. Servers should be rated based on the productivity of their service rotations. For example, Binney's serve doesn't do a lot for me, but we score more than 50% of the time when she's at the service line, and that does a whole lot for me. Aces can be very helpful, and it's certainly a leading indicator that a server has some oomph to their serve, but it's not an end all be all. The problem is that's the stat kept in the box score, and scoring percentage isn't, so that's what we focus on.
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Yeah, that's exactly my feeling. And yes, it's a requirement for hosting regionals. Not the first two rounds. It's crazy it took this long to get it done. I wonder what the logistics ended up being?
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Texas just got a new Taraflex floor installed. Apparently it's permanent.
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I don't think she goes on runs because she gets the serve in. She goes on runs because we have a great rotation when she's on the court, and she has good enough placement on her serves the other team doesn't score on them. You talk about SEs being momentum killers, but not being able to put pressure with the serve loses matches. How many set points has Texas lost to Kentucky because they can't score from the service line, even when the serve goes in? When the match goes to extended points, the ONLY way to win is to win from the service rotation. We're not losing those extended sets because of service errors. We're losing those extended sets because of first ball side outs, which is a direct result of not putting any pressure on Kentucky's attack out of serve receive. I vehemently disagree with you it's only about getting the serve in when facing an Elite Eight type team and above. You have to score a little bit more than the opponent does from the service line, whatever that takes. If you're incredibly superior at receiving serve, and terminal on first ball side outs, or put so much pressure on the opponent with the attack from serve receive that you get the point in transition on the next rally or two, then there's less pressure to score on the serve because you're dominating on side out. But we're not incredibly superior. We're above average for sure, but guess what? So is every other team at that Elite Eight level. In any case, I hardly think Gary's issue is service errors anyway. It's that she has a lollipop for a serve. That's the problem. This team doesn't have a service error issue. Here's 9 of the other top teams in the country. There's a high likelihood we'll be facing one of these teams in the regional final in Austin, assuming we make it that far, and a virtual guarantee the other Final Four teams will be in this group. Texas at 2.29 errors per set Louisville 1.85 Nebraska 2.0 Kentucky 2.08 Pitt 2.24 (Texas would go here) Arizona State 2.36 SMU 2.83 Wisconsin 2.89 A&M 2.9 Stanford 2.98 ______________________________________________ Literally smack dab in the middle in terms of rankings of the stat. Closer to Louisville's 1.85 than Stanford's 2.98 statistically.
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Like Tonto said to the Lone Ranger, I don't know about this we shit white man. I can't speak for whoever was posting, but there was a time when it seemed like Elliott would garnish the roster with local players for DS positions instead of recruiting nationally, and it didn't go great. But that doesn't mean local players aren't any good. It just means there should be a high standard regardless of where they're from, and I'm not sure we've had that for our back row players on a consistent basis during Elliott's tenure. Amazing pins and middles. Not so great at the other positions. The rumor I heard - and I want to emphasize this is a rumor, not fact - is that Elliott's former wife was extremely active in the local club scene, and that impacted the roster choices somewhat. But that would have been a while ago, and wouldn't really be germane to what you seem to be talking about. I'm just being goofy anyway. Tuozzo isn't a realistic option.
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That's not really true, unless you mean the one time against Auburn where she had 5 serving errors. But the whole team was on a serving error funk, with 17 in total. I honestly think the staff was trying to emphasize getting the ball lower towards the net. This was the second match after the back to back losses to A&M and Kentucky where I think they went into a bit of desperation mode regarding trying to make the serves more effective. Along with the 5 serving errors, she also had one that hit the tape and then fell for an ace. She had the 4 serving errors versus Georgia, and the 3 serving errors versus Kentucky, but only 32 serving errors overall. I don't have a complaint about her service errors. I just find her serves woefully ineffective. The funny thing is, I think Binney's serves aren't that great and there are some numbers to back it up. Opponents are more adept at passing Binney's serves for optimal options for the setter more than any other server, but Texas scores more than 50% of the time when she's at the service line, which is by far best on the team. Elliott calls her the best server on the team. Which...I guess. The numbers matter. In any case, I don't really think we're getting Tuozzo. I just like fantasizing about it as a tweak to Kentucky. Plus she's really really good, and she's from Texas.
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Boy am I not sold on Gary as the libero. I want to be. I like her. But I am not. She makes the spectacular play but not the routine play. Grab Texan Molly Tuozzo from Kentucky. Really make it personal.
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No, it would be a volleyball specific rivalry. I can't imagine having strong feelings about their other programs. I mean I have strong feelings about their basketball program, but not vis a vis us. And since Calipari left that helped a lot. No one is thinking Kentucky is going to join the legions of Texas haters across all sports. I don't think of Nebraska as a rivalry in anything other than volleyball. Or Stanford. Nebraska fans hate all things Texas, but I don't give them a whole lot of thought outside of volleyball. Why would I?
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It feels like there's more mutual respect between the Texas and Texas A&M programs. Morrison was a volunteer coach at Texas for a couple of years back when that was a thing. He's openly stated Texas is their standard they'd like to get to. Craig Skinner was a coach under John Cook at Nebraska for 5 years. It's a pretty well known thing Cook and Elliott did not get along. There's been no outward signs of bad blood between Skinner and Elliott, but there are potential reasons for it. The loss to Kentucky in the finals. The Skinner transfer. The Rutherford transfer. Josephson coming over. Texas not recruiting any of the players from the state on the Kentucky roster. Texas being lauded as the new king of the conference upon entry when Kentucky has dominated it for a long time. Then there's the whole competitive psychology of fueling the flight/fight mechanism in our brain with perceive injustice and disrespect, whether real or not. We need to win more. We won last year but then lost the conference title to them. It's a bummer this match went the way it did, especially when it looked like we had it. But I see great potential in Kentucky being a huge rivalry down the road.
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Oh, I don't think this team has a chance against this Cornhusker team. They simply don't serve tough enough. Not saying Nebraska can't be beaten, but it won't be by Texas. I do think Texas can beat anyone else, including Kentucky. And I do think Nebraska is capable of losing. But it would need to be a team that can consistently get them out of system from the service line, and that's not Texas this year.
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