Shockers at KU

[flyingMoose]

Do I think I can go back and forth? Nah!

Set One

Starters are Kayce, Emma, Sina, Natalie, Sophia, and Morgan with Lily as the libero.

Mckayla and Natalie rotate in. Megan also rotated in somewhere in there. Skylar Goering was named as a sub, but I doubt it.

Back and forth to 11-11. No lead greater than two.

Initially, I thought we were seeing a ton of overpasses but LS is not crediting assists in the play-by-play.

13-15 at the Media Timeout.

18-18 and still no lead greater than two.

Oops! Three in a row for the Jayhawks. Timeout Shocks at 18-21.

The Shocks get it back to 20-21, but KU eases to the finish line.


22-25 KU

.256 v .385

Emma with four kills, Marriah with three.

[flyingMoose]

Set Two

Same starters.

3-6, 6-6, 6-9. Small runs to and fro.

10-15 at the Media Timeout.

Back to 13-15 and a series of sideouts.

In addition to the regular subs so far, Brylee has subbed in this set.

The Shocks get within one at 16-17, 18-19 before tying the set at 20. Timeout KU.

20-22 and a Shocker timeout.

20-24 and another TO by the Shocks.


22-25 KU

.333 v .397

Emma with 8-0-14 for .571 and Natalie at 7-2-12 for .417.

[flyingMoose]

Set Three

[1972Shocker]

[U]Emma with 8-0-14 for .571 and Natalie at 7-2-12 for .417.

That looks good until you look at the KU Box Scores and see their 6-3 freshman middle Caroline Crawford at 15-1-18 = .778

[flyingMoose]

Same crew starts this set.

[flyingMoose]

That looks good until you look at the KU Box Scores and see their 6-3 freshman middle Caroline Crawford at 15-1-18 = .778

That is why I never, ever look at the stats for the opps. :)

[flyingMoose]

11-10 moves to 11-14. Media Timeout at 13-15.

Shockers stay close starting at 15-16 to 19-20 to 19-22. Shocker TO.


20-25 KU

Shockers 0-3 KU

.255 v .333

Emma 10-0-21 for .476. Natalie 7-2-13 for .385. Marriah 6-0-14 for .429.

The player-who-shall-not-be-named 18-1-23 for .739 for KU.

[1972Shocker]

Hard to really evaluate the level of pay solely on match stats but despite getting swept this seemed like the Shocks were more competitive than the were in the final 3 sets on Thrusday.

The Shocks hit .255 for the match which is way better than the .028 they hit in the final 3 sets yesterday. Unfortunately, KU hit .333 led by the freshman middle Crawford who had a spectacular match per the numbers posted above by @flyingMoose.

Guess one thing the Shocks accomplished this weekend was getting their middles more involved as Emma and Natalie. Maybe that was out of necessity as our pin players, for the most part, struggled against KU although Mariah had a decent match today although only getting 14 chances. Brylee was okay when she was in but only had 6 chances. So Emma, Natalie, Mariah and Brylee were a combined 27-3-54 = .445. Everyone else was 14-10-56 =.072. I don't know if KU just had a great defensive scheme to shut down our pin players or if they were just physically better or if the Shocks simply were not in sync. Maybe a combination of all 3.

[1972Shocker]

Looks like starting the match Kayce and Sophia were paired in one front line and McKayla and Megan in the alternating front line rotation.

Lily, at the Libero, did the standard swapping with the two middles, Emma and Natalie, as the middles rotated to the back line. I think Natalie did one serving rotation.

Looks like Mariah would sub in for Sina on the front row and Sina would rotate back in on the back row. Mariah actually had a pretty good match and Sina is clearly the better back row player and a competent back row attacker.

Looks like for the time being Morgan has supplanted Nicole as the only six rotation player. Nicole did get into the match on Thursday but looked anything but confident. Morgan on the other hand has some swagger although she wasn't very good on the front row on Saturday so I don't know that this is a lock to continue but I am just not too sure Nicole has the demeanor to fight for this role.

Megan was not effective through the 1st set and a half in the McKayla rotation and Lambo replaced her with Brylee midway through the 2nd set. Brylee played three rotations with McKayla one in the 2nd set and 2 in the 3rd set all were about 10 points in duration. Megan was not very effective in her rotations at 1-0-7. Brylee did not get much action until her final rotation when she had 4 kills and 1 attack error. She only had 1 other attack attempt that was dug and I don't know when that occurred.

Kayce set Sophia 19 times and McKayla set Megan/Brylee a combined 13 times. Actually, thanks to the strong finish by Brylee the Megan/Brylee combo at 5-1-13 = .308 was a little more efficient than Sophia at 7-4-19 = .158. This resulted in a combined attack for this position of 12-5-32 = .219. Morgan was 5-6-23 = .043. The Shocks have to get more production from these positions. Now how much of this lack of production is attributable to the hitters, how much to the setters and how much to the passers is hard to say.

This team has not been a good passing team and I think the move to Lily at Libero was largely to try to address this. Initially it looked to me like Lambo tried Sina at the six rotation role but now has seemed to move away from that. However, it does look like Lambo has lost any confidence in Megan and Brylee on the back row and I think that is warranted from what I have seen. Early on it looked like Nicole was going to fill this six rotation role very well but that has kind of gone bye-bye it would seem. Sina was not that effective on the front row and hopefully the Mariah/Sina exchange will work well. If it doesn't maybe Megan or Brylee, whoever is not paired with one of the setter rotations could fill that swap with Sina.

Clearly Lambo is trying to come up with a answer to the team's poor passing but that just may require getting in the gym and getting better at it. That may have to wait until the offseason and next falls practices as the Shocks are about at the end of the road this season.

Even if the Shocks would somehow sweep Houston, very unlikely IMO, and Tulane would be swept by Tulsa, again unlikely IMO, I would guess Tulane has the tiebreaker over the Shocks because of their sweep of the Shocks. It doesn't look like there will be an NIVC Tournament this year as far as I can tell and even if there was its doubtful the Shocks would be invited.