Shocks at Temple (Friday @ 6:00 pm) and at UConn (Sunday at 10:00 am)

[1972Shocker]

The Shocks (12-14, 7-8) take their final road trip of the season to visit Temple (6-21, 3-12) and UConn (13-15, 5-10) this weekend.

The Shocks swept both Temple (19, 21, 19) and UConn (17, 19, 20) in Koch Arena on the last weekend of October.

At this point the Shocks are pretty much playing for pride, for fun and I suppose trying to impress the coach heading into next year.

Shocks need to go 2-1 in their remaining AAC matches and 3-1 in their remaining 4 matches to secure a .500 season. They have to win out to have a winning season.

Shocker Match Notes

:poster_shocks:

[flyingMoose]

Early Friday Match

Tulane 2-3 Cincinnati
22 17 (16) (22) 13

The Green Wave, who needed to win the rest of their matches to have hopes of an at-large bid to the Tournament, led 11-8 and 13-12 in the fifth set before the Bearcats scored the last three points to take the match. The loss also ends their eleven match win streak. The win by Cincy helps UCF in their seeding for the Tournament.

[1972Shocker]

Tulane seems to be a up-and-comer in AAC Volleyball. I hope they get the invite to the AAC's invite to the NIVC. They have made me look prety good after I made the following post after the Shocks beat them in 5 sets to open AAC play: 'I was pretty impressed with Tulane's talent and I think they will be tough out in the AAC this year (and in the future). It might be to the Shockers benefit that they only play Tulane once this year and that they got them early'.

[1972Shocker]

Shocks fall in 4 sets to Temple. :sour:

https://goshockers.com/news/2018/11/16/volleyball-temple-takes-down-wichita-state-3-1.aspx

[ShockTalk]

Big ouch.

[flyingMoose]

Afraid of this. North Texas may be our only shot at a win for the rest of the season.

[flyingMoose]

Other Friday Matches

UCF 3-0 SMU

Tulsa 0-3 UConn

USF 3-0 Houston

Memphis 0-3 ECU

[1972Shocker]

Memphis 0-3 ECU

[flyingMoose]

Corrected. Thanks.

[flyingMoose]

As a total aside ...

UNI 2-3 Evansville

with the Panthers being a 95% favorite per Pablo. It happens without the effect of injuries and the like.

[1972Shocker]

Yes, getting Evansvilled extends beyond the men's basketball court.

The Shockers got Evansvilled twice this year by Houston who still only has 3 AAC wins.

[1972Shocker]

Shocks are down 0-2 at UConn losing the first 2 sets 21-25 and 18-25.

Tabitha set out the 2nd set but is back in in the 3rd. Emma only played in 1 of the sets and only had 1 attack. Alex Koon has not played at all today. Lambo perhaps playing with his focus on next year.

Looks like the Shocks played a 5-1 in Set 1 and the 6-2 in Set 2

Regan, Megan and Brooke attacking at pretty efficiently. Nothing from anyone else.

Shockers with one of the all too common swoons lose 6 of 7 points to go from up 8-6 to down 9-13 in Set 3. Regan after 2 pretty good sets is back into high error rate mode on her attacks.

UConn completes the sweep with a 25-21 win in the 3rd set.

The Shocker are now guaranteed a losing season both overall and in AAC play.

UConn outhit the Shockers .300 to .155 while UConn was sided out at 75.4% of the time to 60.8% for the Shocks.

Megan and Regan both had 13 kills but Megan was more efficient with a higher kill rate and a lower error rate to hit .333 while Regan hit .139.

An attack error by Tabitha on the final point of the match pushed Tabitha into a negative hitting percentage of -.050 on 2-3-20. But again the Shockers had very little production in the middle and teams have figured that out and they pretty much are playing to stop our outside hitters.

flyingMoose was on target with his concerns that North Texas may be our only remaining win and at this point I am not sure that is a given. I sure don't see the Shocks beating Tulsa on Wednesday. The Friday match with North Texas might even be looked at as the 1st match of the Spring season.

[flyingMoose]

I do not understand the finer points of volleyball nearly well enough to understand what happened to this season.

Inexperience? Tabitha is the only senior with others that would have been seniors having to give up volleyball because of injuries.

With the youth of the team, was there not a high enough leadership quotient?

Is this is a transition season that programs go through, a transition season that is rougher than what we have come to expect?

Were there more injuries than normal that never allowed the team to achieve some rhythm given the personnel they were working with?

Is the next memorable setter not yet on campus? I don't remember the redshirt freshman season that Emily had, but I have to think it was better than the one Kora has had.

Have there been some down recruiting years? We certainly don't have the littles that we have had in the past.

You will have your own set of "I wonders."

[flyingMoose]

Other Sunday Matches

UCF 3-1 Houston

Memphis 0-3 Cincinnati

Tulane 3-1 ECU

Tulsa 3-0 Temple

USF 1-3 SMU

[ShockTalk]

Really unfortunate how the team is playing right now. We were playing gritty against some top notch teams early in the season. I know that key injuries has cost us both in skill and leadership on the court. However, as we are right now, our playing level may be at the bottom of the league, sans one, maybe two teams. I feel badly for the whole team, but especially Giorgia.

[1972Shocker]

Speaking of Giorgia she did set a new single season Shocker record for digs. Her match-high 22 digs in the contest, gave her 634 digs this season to break Kelly Broussard's single-season record of 628 digs set back in 2007. giorgia will certainly add to her total in the final two matches against Tulsa Wednesday night and on Friday afternoon against North Texas.

[1972Shocker]

Kora Kauling joined the Shockers last year and apprenticed for a year behind Emily Hiebert as a redshirt. I think there were high hopes that Kora would be able to take over this year. Jordan Roberts, who I think is a walk-on, joined the team in 2015 and then after redshirting her 1st year only played in 15 sets total in the past 2 years behind Emily and much of that was just to come in to serve. However, coming into this year Lambo apparently felt that he needed some experienced help at the setter position and he was able to bring Kali Eaken in as a graduate transfer with 1 year of eligibility remaining. Kali seemed to be getting more comfortable with Lambo's systems and with her teammates when she went down with a career ending knee injury. At that point Lambo had to try to figure out how to best utilize Kora and/or Jordan to get through the year. That was complicated by a number of other injuries of varying severity to some key players. Unfortunately, both Kora and Jordan had some deficiencies in their skill sets at this point and neither was particularly good at connecting with the middle hitters. Once opponents figured out the Shocks were struggling to score consistently in the middle they were able to focus their defensive alignments on stopping the Shocker pin players making it even more difficult for the Shockers to find kills.

I think Lambo prefers to run a fast offense that requires something other than just throwing it up high to the hitters. That was something this year's team wasn't real proficient at. It appears to me that one of the key challenges for next year is to improve the team's setting and timing with the hitters especially in the middle. I guess the big question is can Kora and/or Jordan step up their games between now and next fall enough to make a significant difference or will Lambo have to go with the inexperienced but highly rated setter in his 2019 recruiting class, Kayce LItzau?

My guess is he would prefer to redshirt Kayce but will he have that luxury? Looking at the histories of setters in Lambo's time at Wichita State we see that Andee Hartig redshirted, Abby Harsh played as a true freshman sharing duties with Andee in a 6-2 offense, Mary Elizabeth Hooper played as a true freshman from day 1 running a 5-1 offense, Chelsey Feeking redshirted and apprenticed 2 additional years behind MEH and Emily Hiebert redshirted during MEH's senior year and seemed to be happy that she did so.

I am sure there are other factors that are beyond my grasp that have also contributed to the performance of the team this year and perhaps some of those are just as critical to the team's success as the setting situation has been.

Hopefully, next year doesn't prevent nearly as many hurdles to overcome as this year has. One thing that Lambo enjoys doing and is very good at is training players so tit will be interesting to see how he deals with this between now and next fall. Still it's possible it might take another season of development to get the program back to what we have been used to under Lambo's guidance. We'll see.

[flyingMoose]

One thing that Lambo enjoys doing and is very good at is training players so it will be interesting to see how he deals with this between now and next fall..

I have sometimes wondered if he did not enjoy the training a bit more than the games - nothing wrong with that. When he first started the program, he did not have a lot of choice - he was unlikely to get the players that a lot of programs wanted. He had to identify raw talent and train 'em up.

I have wondered if the National Seed in 2017 and moving to the AAC did not give him an entree to a somewhat higher level of players - players that did not have to redshirt to take some time to develop their skill set. I hope so - Tulane starts four freshmen and two sophomores, and UCF starts two or three freshmen. We shall see in the next year or two.

Oh - and the couple of minutes of the Kayce video that I watched involved a lot of throwing it up high to the outside. That is probably what the coach wanted and does not say that she can't do other types of sets well. Plus she has had a few years to add to her repertoire.

[1972Shocker]

IIRC Lambo has siad in the past that he enjoys the training more than the actual matches. But I don't think that means he is not competitive and doesn't care about winning. I think he is and I think he does. I also think he really likes strategizing and coming up with schemes that will give his opponents some challenges.

[flyingMoose]

Yes, I did not mean to suggest that he was blowing off the games - leaving everything to the assistants, for example. He is over there furiously writing notes about what he sees on the court, making adjustments, etc. - not just waiting and breaking down the tape later.

[flyingMoose]

In fairness, I should say that I am probably spoiled by past successes.