Shockers v Houston

[flyingMoose]

The Shockers begin back-to-back home weekends with a match against Houston on Friday at 7 pm. The Coogs are 9-3 in the AAC, alone in second place and a game ahead of the Shocks and Cincinnati. Houston was a 3-0 winner in the first meeting of the two teams.

Houston have faint chances to get an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament, and the Shocks probably have to win out to be in that conversation. Thus, a big match for both teams.

Right now, the RPIs are 55 for the Shockers and 63 for Houston.

Web site articles for the Shocks and Houston.

[1972Shocker]

Looking forward to seeing if and how the Shocks bounce back from the shellacking put on them by UCF. This weekend could well determine which way the rest of this season goes.

Let's hope we don't see a repeat of last year where the Shocks started out 8-0 and finished 1-8 the rest of the way. I don't think that will happen but to finish strong I think the Shocks need to get back on track pronto.

Due to other commitments tomorrow evening I won't know the outcome until after the match is over. But at least a can watch the replay on ESPN+ and fast forward through the breaks in the action.

[flyingMoose]

RH article about Kayce as a lead-in to the weekend.

[flyingMoose]

Houston 3-2 Shockers
(27), 25, 18, (17), 13

Tough, hard-fought match. The story of volleyball - when you pass well, you score well; when you don't pass well, ...

The major highlight was Sophia hitting 19-4-44 for .341, leading the Shocks in kill and %.

In the fifth set when the score was 2-8, five of the Cougar points had come on blocks.


1972Shocker will give a great match summary - I am confident of that.

[flyingMoose]

Wednesday Match

SMU 1-3 Memphis
(22), 20, 22, 28


Other Friday Matches

UCF 3-2 Cincinnati
(22), (23), 15, 13, 11

Tulane 3-0 Tulsa
24, 19, 19

Memphis 3-2 Temple
(23), 17, (22), 20, 8

USF 1-3 ECU
(21), 21, 22, 17

[1972Shocker]

I wasn't planning on doing this but flyingMoose put me on the spot. I haven't had a chance to watch the match. But I have looked over the box score and play-by-play. Some observations based on that:

Set 1: Very tight set unitl Houston won 6 of 7 points late to turn a 18-20 deficit into a 24-21 lead. A Houston service error and back-to-back service aces by Brylee tied it at 24-all. The Shocks fought off 3 more set points to stay even at 27-all and a Houston attack error and a Brylee kill gave the Shocks the 29-27 win.

Set 2. The Shocks forged out to a 17-12 lead but then 8-1 run to take the lead at 20-18. The Shocks evened it up a 20-20 and were serving for the set at 24-23 and at 25-24 but couldn't put it away. 3 consecutive kills by Houston's Abbie Jackson gave the Cougars the set at 27-25.

Set 3. Houston erased an early 4-6 deficit with a 5 point run to take a 9-6 lead. The Shocks won 4 of the next 5 poitns to tie it at 10-10. At that point a 10-2 run by Houston put them in contorl at 20-12 and the Cougars cruised to a 25-18 win.

Set 4. The Shocks flipped the script as they went on a 12-3 run to turn a 8-9 deficit into a 20-12 lead and the Shocks cruised to a 25-17 lead and seemingly had siezed the momentum.

Set 5. That momentum did not last long as Houston raced out to a 10-2 lead in the 5th set including 5 blocks during an 8 point stretch. 6-1 Houston middle Rachel Tullos was involved in all 5 of those blocks. At that point the Shocks could easily have thrown in the towel. Coming back from that kind of deficit in a 15-point 5th set against a quality team is extremely diffiuclt. However, the Shocks managed to do that primarily behind the pay of Brylee and Sophia with a block by Sophia/Natalie pulling the Shocks to within 1 at 14-13. Following a Houston timeout, a Lily Liekweg service error ended the match. For some reason I just hate service errors like Biff Tannen hates manure. Hate to see a match like this end on a service error. But this was an amazing come back by the Shocks to even give themselves a chance in this set.

Houston outhit the Shocks .174 to .144. The Shocks actually had 67 kills on 208 attemtps (32.2%) to Houston's 58 kils on 201 attemtps (28.9%). However, Houston only had 23 attack errors for a very good 11.4% error rate while the Shockers had 37 attack errors for a relatively poor 17.8% error rate. Houston outblocked the Shocks 11-8 with 5 of those coming at the beginning of the 5th set as mentioned above. The attack errors perhaps were the difference in this match.

The Shocks had 5 service aces (3 from Brylee) to 9 service errors vs 6 aces to 13 errors for Houston. So a litte avantage for the Shocks there.

Appears from the numbers was that this was a knock down, drag out defensvie battle with both teams playing hard. I see that the Houston libero, Kate Georgiades, had a whopping 39 digs. Not sure if those were mostly routine or the result of hustle and skill but that is a boat laod of digs.

Individually, Sophia Rohling as flyingMoose reported was excellent hitting 19-4-44 = .341. The problem with Sophia this season is that she has jsut not been consistent and you never know what you will get from her. Natalie was a bit below par hitting 14-7-39 = .179 as was Brylee who hit 13-6-49 = .143. I am assuming Houston was probably zoned in on trying to keep Natalie and Brylee under control and they did that.

Kailin had 11 kils but she also had 10 attack errors. MorganS struggled hitting 2-5-16 = .188.

This is a tough loss. The poor stretches in the middle of Sets 2 and 3 and the bad start in Set 5 were just a little too much for the Shocks to overcome.

In any case, glad to see the Ladies bounce back from the beat down by UCF to battle a good Houston team to pretty much a stand still in what sounds liek a grueling match. Overall Houston outscored the Shocks 111-110 in this match. The Shocks meed just a bit more magic or perhaps a Big Mac would have gotten them over the hump.

Looking forward to catching the replay of this match sometime this weekend.

[WuDrWu]

I will try to address this more in detail later in the week. I was there and thought it was a good solid hard fought match. First time in 2 years I felt like WSU was the better team. Houston lucked/tricked their way to the win. Kayce did not have her best match by any measure (not that I'm criticizing her but her best and we sweep) and it felt like to me at least that Brylee wasn't on her game and may have been a touch under the weather.

Boy was Sofia strong. Great to have her back in form. The Houston libero was dynamite. I don't know how many points she saved, but it was a ton. A **** ton.

It felt like we were in charge of set 1 (I know the score doesn't show that) but the late comeback was just WSU turning it on. That being said, we TOTALLY gave away the 2nd. We had a big late lead and just fell apart. Still can't believe we lost the 2nd. Nothing at all against Childs but when she spelled Brylee in the middle of the match things did not go well at all.

We just had WAY too many attack errors and not all of them were because of Houston's effective blocking game.

The serving was interesting because after 2 sets it was 3 aces and 5 errors for the Shocks and 10 errors and 1 ace for Houston, and they just served harder the last 3 sets and got better results.

After being down 10-2 in the 5th, the Shocks battled back to 12-14 and won an incredible point that started with Lily just barely clearing the net with her serve and the entire crowd gasped as they thought it would be in the net.....then Houston took a time out and at 13-14 and the place going crazy she served long....match over.

Houston is good solid team...and I promise you they don't want ANYTHING to do with us again. I don't know (healthy) how they would get us going forward, but I know I'm biased.

It was a great match, and it stings to lose a match like that. The showed a ton of fight against a good team....just not quite enough. I hope we dust Tulane on Sunday.

[flyingMoose]

After the matchups of the First Four, the RPIs are

23 - UCF
53 - Houston
54 - Cincinnati
67 - Shockers

[The Mad Hatter]

For me the match came down to 3 things that cost WSU, any one of which goes differently and we win:

1. We flat out missed a lot of attacks to aimed deep and to the line. There were a lot of cases of our hitters making the right read, having open court to hit to and just hitting it long or wide. A couple of those going in, and things look a lot different.

2. Late in the match, Houston figured out that they could beat us by softly dumping the ball to the middle of the court between our block and back row. They built their lead in the 5th doing this. We made our run back in part by adjusting to this (bringing back row players closer to the net and sometimes dropping a blocker off the net), but we made the adjustment too late. If we adjust quicker, Houston probably doesn't get that 8 point lead in the 5th.

3. The Houston libero saved a lot of points for them where we did everything right and a play that normally would be a kill was a dig. Both teams dug well, but she made some crazy plays to win them points they had no business winning. This also partially explains point 1, because I think after having good swings dug out, we were over-swinging at times and resulted in some of those errors.

[WuDrWu]

For me the match came down to 3 things that cost WSU, any one of which goes differently and we win:

1. We flat out missed a lot of attacks to aimed deep and to the line. There were a lot of cases of our hitters making the right read, having open court to hit to and just hitting it long or wide. A couple of those going in, and things look a lot different.

2. Late in the match, Houston figured out that they could beat us by softly dumping the ball to the middle of the court between our block and back row. They built their lead in the 5th doing this. We made our run back in part by adjusting to this (bringing back row players closer to the net and sometimes dropping a blocker off the net), but we made the adjustment too late. If we adjust quicker, Houston probably doesn't get that 8 point lead in the 5th.

3. The Houston libero saved a lot of points for them where we did everything right and a play that normally would be a kill was a dig. Both teams dug well, but she made some crazy plays to win them points they had no business winning. This also partially explains point 1, because I think after having good swings dug out, we were over-swinging at times and resulted in some of those errors.

Excellent assessment.

A bit of an addition to #2, I think in the first 10 Houston points in set 5 they got 2 by WSU service errors and 5 Houston blocks. You're totally right about the soft dumps and the adjustments, but I don't remember their 5 set lead built on that....I could be wrong.

[The Mad Hatter]

Excellent assessment.

A bit of an addition to #2, I think in the first 10 Houston points in set 5 they got 2 by WSU service errors and 5 Houston blocks. You're totally right about the soft dumps and the adjustments, but I don't remember their 5 set lead built on that....I could be wrong.

You are correct that the attack errors were the main problem in the 5th, but Houston did have 4 kills in getting to 11-3 and I think at least 3 of those 4, if not all 4, were on soft dumps. Given our hitting errors into the block early, maybe we lose those points anyway, but in a high pressure situation you want the opponent feel pressure to commit attacking errors (as we did), and easy kills on the dumps put no pressure on Houston.

After we made the adjustment, Houston had only 1 kills and 2 attacks errors (after 4 kills and 0 attack errors before the adjustment).

[The Mad Hatter]

Also, once we made the adjustment, our hitting errors improved, because when Houston tried to dump it resulted in an easy in-system look for us instead of a kill for them.

[1972Shocker]

Watched the replay this evening. Entertaining match. Georgiades was incredible. While Houston did a good job keeping Brylee and Natalie under control the Shocks did an equally good job keeping Houston's attackers under control. All-AAC outside Abbie Jackson was held to 18-9-75 = .120. However, I was pretty impressed with the defense played by Jackson.

That 5th set was just a bit odd. There was the 5 Houston blocks among Houstons first 8 points. The Shocks also had 3 service errors in the set and all were from players who are among their most accurate servers (Kayce, Annalie and Lily). In fact, Lily who had the service error at match point had served quite well throughout the match with the service error at match point being her only miscue in that department. Houston who had 13 service errors in the first 4 sets compared to 6 for the Shocks through 4 sets did not make a service error in the 5th set.

Sophia played really well. Let's hope that continues. We said that after the Tulsa game as wll but it didn't happen. Hoping this time will be different. She looked like an All-Conference player against Houston.