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SL Xpress

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Everything posted by SL Xpress

  1. Louisville is not nearly as big as Texas overall. They have the 6'6 middle blocker, who is amazing. They have Sherman, who is 6'3. Then they have the two 6'5 opposites. But their outside hitters, Petersen and Chicoine, are 6' and 5'10.
  2. I feel like Elliott leans on the idea he wants the players to figure it out. I find myself calling for timeouts often with him, but what are you going to do? Then I watch Hambly at Stanford and think, "Well, at least Elliott isn't THAT bad."
  3. I'm unconvinced there's a sport where a timeout seems to make a bigger difference than volleyball. It may not be true, but it feels like it.
  4. Chicoine was terrific for Purdue last year. It's a little crazy to me both her and Hudson transferred. That Cresse chick, the middle blocker, is deadly on the slide. A little weird that Louisville has two players with sisters who played at Texas. Peyton Petersen, the sister of Sydney, and Nayelis Cabello, the sister of Naomi Cabello, who transferred to NC State.
  5. It looked obvious to me the index finger moved to the left as the ball passed by. They showed some terrible replays from the side, but when looking from the camera from behind the Louisville side head on, it just seemed blatantly obvious to me. But it looked like the finger moved in real time to me as well.
  6. I thought it was a touch in real time, and it's definitely a touch on the replay. It's not hard to see, Holly. It's obvious. I also think Louisville is really good.
  7. Announcers completely missing the fact Sydney Petersen played at Texas.
  8. Who is the best back row defensive player we've ever had that was the main outside hitter? I honestly don't know. I just know Stafford is really impressive out there. Tied at 12 apiece.
  9. The Rainbow Connection!
  10. I enjoy watching Louiville on these extended points. Maybe not quite so much as I would if it was against a different opponent, but much respect regardless. It also helps we're up 11-4 right now. Hopefully we continue this.
  11. Every time this season I see someone run a D-ball now I'm going to think of Js1.
  12. Louisville's block and ability to win the extended rallies felt like the difference. Texas more impressive athletically, especially hitting the ball. I love our back row this year. Let's see what happens if we keep from getting in a deep hole early on.
  13. It's a bummer we don't have Singletary on this team, but such is life. No offense to Bunton. She's good, but this team would obviously be better if Singletary was still on the roster. I wonder if Harvey at some point surpasses Bunton. I doubt it happens this year. But I'm curious what happens next year.
  14. Our production out of the right side attack with Cari Spears is better than I've seen it for years. No offense to Molly Phillips, who was amazing for us, but she was crafty and a surgeon, not a physical wunderkind. Last year's right side attack was incredibly disappointing. It's early in the season, so we'll so how it goes, but early returns are very impressive. Louisville looks great. I wish we could get those 5 points back when we started the set down 0-5. Louisville's block is outstanding.
  15. I feel like Sam Gore has blackmail information on a higher up at ESPN, so they can't actually fire him. But they've parked him in volleyball coverage where he can do the least amount of damage. Unfortunately, as a volleyball fan, he does plenty of damage to me. He's so wooden. And he's not actually that knowledgeable, or even being interested in being knowledgeable, about the sport he covers.
  16. Featuring Marina Crownover for the Tigers. Jhenna Gabriel on staff as an assistant to HC Dawn Sullivan. Sullivan has done a good job there her first two years.
  17. We can overlook them if we beat them. It will be in part because they weren't that good to begin with. How do we know if a team is actually good? We lose to them. It's perfectly good circular reasoning. Some of you just don't get it, because you don't get logic.
  18. Just realize basketball is way more transactional than football. Even now. And football is very transactional. All things being equal then how the program presents itself is very important, so I don't want to say it's meaningless, but programs come in with huge NIL offers out of the blue in basketball all the time. Practically every top player is potentially Felix Ojo. NIL endorsements have always been more lucrative in basketball than other sports. Think of the king of them all, Michael Jordan, who really shifted the whole endorsement deal into a higher plane. Texas has a couple of well heeled boosters who are friends to the basketball program almost exclusively, so Texas has some firepower. But they're not Phil Knight level wealthy, or even Cody Campbell wealthy. It will be interesting to see how Miller is able to navigate all of this. This isn't his first rodeo, but the rules of the game are different now. Before it used to be the shoe companies and AAU affiliations were the primary thing to navigate. We've seen a couple of championship teams in the NIL era that did it by keeping guys on campus for a while rather than fielding an NBA first round draft pick at every position the way Calipari used to. Not that Florida or Houston didn't have any NIL dollars invested in their teams. They had a lot. But it's as much about managing the roster as it is getting every player you're after.
  19. If Bo Ogden is a priority target and we can't land him, we need to fire the general manager. I'm only partly joking. The recruiting pitch should be, "Son, if you don't come to Texas they're going to fire me."
  20. As far as how this team looks, I feel like Nebraska is so much better than everyone else on paper. But I thought that last year and Penn State took the championship from them. It would be somewhat hilarious to me if Nebraska makes it to the championship game again only to lose. Always the bridesmaid title is already being attached to them. This year could cement it. I'm also still unreasonably upset we didn't win the SEC last year. That team was underachieving. I don't know all the reasons, but they never got in sync. I don't think bringing in Carlsen was the right decision, even though she's definitely talented. A better pure setter than Swindle. But the dynamics were off on that team all year. I didn't feel like Skinner was able to live up to her potential either, but I don't have any legitimate speculation why that was. Just an unfulfilling team for me to follow in some ways. And that's okay. We became spoiled. Anyway, I'd like to win the SEC. This year is the first year for a tournament, which I've never wanted. But it's there, so I hope we win it. Then let's see what they can do in the NCAA tournament. Long ways to go, with an exciting non con slate ahead. I can hardly wait until tomorrow night. Should be a good one!
  21. I've always felt like Elliott likes to serve conservatively early in the season. When we've had our best serving performances in the tournament the last few years, it wasn't until the last couple of games and then into the opening two rounds of the tournament that I felt he had the players let it rip. That could be a whole lot of bollocks. I don't have any data to back that up. It's just been my thought in watching the team. Everyone remembers the championship run where our serves were downright nasty. I'll never forget that Nebraska win. Man, I get so much joy just thinking about that match. But even the year before when we won the championship the serves were filthy come tournament time. It's interesting to me we don't have Lauenstein on a dedicated serving pattern. I know she's not back row material, especially with the studs we have back there. I don't know exactly who she would replace. I also don't know how all aspects of her game compare to how she was at Nebraska. But she was an outstanding server when she was in Lincoln. From a serving perspective she should be able to improve the team a great deal from behind the line. But I'm not at practices or anything, so I don't pretend to know what I'm talking about.
  22. " "Rape and pillage. Rape and pillage. No no. That's not a command. Sit down. It's just that I don't quite understand why it is that pillage should take the curse off rape, because it does, doesn't it? 'The Vikings raped and pillaged their way through the north' sounds a lot merrier than a gang of Norwegian Sailors suspected of a series of rapes in the Sunderland area. Add pillage to rape and suddenly it has a certain air of knockabout fun! But pillage is bad enough by itself. It's theft, looting and arson. Being pillaged would be an awful thing to happen to anyone. What it definitely isn't is a spoonful of sugar to help the rape go down."
  23. Service errors are way overrated as a statistic. I'm not saying they're unimportant. They are important. But what is more important is the effectiveness of serves. Otherwise players would be back there serving underhanded. For some servers, they might as well be. But because it's measured that's what everyone focuses on. I wish there was a stat for each player that showed the percentage of serves their team scores on. That's way more important than aces, which is also overrated as a stat. Obviously scoring a point is often as much about the rotation a player is in as it is the effectiveness of their serve, but it would still be way more useful than aces and errors, especially as a ratio. That's a dumb measurement of the effectiveness of a server, their aces to error ratio on serves. There is a great site I went on that explained the analytics in terms of getting an advantage on one exchange and being able to capitalize on it, even if it wasn't during the very next exchange. It's similar to any net sport. You put the opposition in a disadvantageous situation where their response back over the net is relatively weak, it puts your team in a good spot to make a forceful shot, which may again get returned, but in a weak way such that your team is again able to make a commanding kill shot. The odds to get the point are in your team's favor with each exchange, even if the first hit over the net didn't score. None of that is measured in the aces/errors statistic. That said, there are times I've seen Stanford service error themselves out of a match, so again, I'm not saying it's unimportant. Just over emphasized by the announcers and fans. We see the opposite true on the Texas side sometimes. Not with serves, but with kill shots. Elliott puts a big emphasis on limiting errors, and sometimes IMO it causes our players to choose to tip the ball over rather than letting it rip. But it's hard to argue with the overall results. It can be frustrating to watch as a fan at times.
  24. No, I'd agree. One is a way bigger deal than the other. It was a me thing. I kept getting frustrated with his dropped passes. That team didn't drop that many passes, and too often, it felt like Blue was the culprit. Fondren and Main reminded me that Blue had 1000 yards from scrimmage last year, along with the 14 TDs. In my mind it wasn't that much. I was wrong.
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