Shocker VB v Temple

[flyingMoose]

The Shocker have their first home match of the AAC schedule on Friday at 7 pm with a match against Temple. This will open the AAC schedule for the Owls.

Temple are a preseason pick for eighth of the thirteen schools playing volleyball. Week-old Pablo has the Shocks as an 80% favorite to win, and Massey has this as a 3-0 match.

[Critter's Pa]

Temple leads the AAC in Opponent hitting percentage at .156 and blocks/set at 2.42. They are second in opponent kills at 10.98/set. They are third in aces/set at 1.76. They are second to last in opponent aces/set at 2.14.

There outside hitter, #14 Taylor Davenport,leads the AAC in kills (190) and kills/set (4.53). Her kills per set is almost 1 kill/set higher than the second highest kill/set in the AAC (3.73). #10 Sydney Jones is second on the team with 86 kills and 2.97 kills/set. Jones also leads the team in aces with 16 and leads the AAC with .55 aces/set. Jones is a freshman. One of their setters, Lexi Yoza is second on the team with 12 aces and leads the team with 93 digs. Their right side, Avery Luoma has double digit aces with 11.

Hopefully we can contain Davenport and avoid Temple's block. We seem to be serving better, perhaps we can rack up a few more aces tomorrow. Since they play a 5-2, they may run into trouble if the sets go long or there are a lot of side outs. Davenport (502) has more than twice the number of attempts of Jones (227), who is second on the team. Whoever is playing on the right side for the Shockers is going to have their hands full.

[flyingMoose]

Temple 1-3 Shockers
20, (20), 16, 25

Shockers .301 v .169.

[Critter's Pa]

Looked like it was going to be a quick match. You could challenge that assumption, but it really wasn't a challenge even though it looked like a challenge and went though all the motions of a challenge. Perhaps the challenge had too much wine, who knows.

We really looked good to start the first set. Started out on a 6-0 run. Gonzo and Brooklyn both had 5 kills, Emerson had 4, Maddie and Swifty each got a kill. Team hit .312 (16 6 32). Only block was a solo by Swifty. Izzi had 13 assists. Temple only had nine kills and 6 errors (.097).

The Shockers went 16 6 38 .263 in set two, nearly identical numbers to set 1. Temple cleaned up their errors hitting .314, and scored the last 4 points to take set 2. Kinds of disappointing, there were a few plays where there was miscommunication between Izzi and hitters. Gonzo had 4 kills this set, Brooklyn, Emmerson, and Morgan all had 3 and Maddie added 2.

Set 3 was all Shockers. Swifty broke through with 4 kills, Brooklyn had 3, Emerson and Gonzo had 2, and Maddie had one. While we had our lowest number of kills this set, the Shockers were very efficient hitting .450 (12 3 20). Temple helped out by committing 8 errors hitting .033.

Set 4 was a back and forth battle. 14 ties and 6 lead changes. Shocker had 4 of their 8 blocks this set and had a season high 19 kills! (19 6 49 .265) The team tallied 24 digs. Temple hit .196 and were again plagued with attacking errors (15 6 46). Gonzo went off and had 7 kills (only 1 error), Maddie had 4 kills, including the game winner, Emmerson and Swifty had 3, Brooklyn and Izzi both had 1.

Our littles really took a beating. Lil Red was hit in the head at least once, Katie took a kill off her shoulder and Annalie was flying all over the place trying to become one with the scoreboard. Everyone had at least on dig. Annalie had 18, Izzi-13, Reagan and Katie both had double digit digs with 10.

Even though Izzi wasn't clicking all the times with the hitters, she finished with 48 assists, Annalie had 6 and Katie had 1.

Tough win and I thought the whole match was a lot closer than it should have been. We held Davenport to only 13 kills which lower than her average. Sydney Jones looked pretty good for a freshman (12 4 36 .222). I think she'll give other teams fits as she gets more experience. Glad we only have to play them once this season. That would be a challenge, or maybe not...

[flyingMoose]

Other Friday Matches

Tulsa 3-2 UAB

Rice 3-2 Tulane

East Carolina 3-1 Florida Atlantic

North Texas 3-1 UTSA


The Shockers had the only home win.


Saturday Match

Charlotte 0-3 South Florida


Sunday Matches

Temple 0-3 Tulsa

UTSA 0-3 Rice

Tulane 0-3 North Texas

Charlotte 0-3 Florida Atlantic

East Carolina 0-3 South Florida

UAB 0-3 Memphis

[1972Shocker]

Unable to attend the match due to Friday night lights and have not watched the replay yet and have only glanced at the box score. But based on Critter's Pa reporting I was a little surprised as it seemed much tighter overall following on live stats. In fact, the Shocks had to rally late in Set 4 just to avoid this match going to a 5th set that would have been a dicey proposition. Glad it did not go to a 5th set

I suppose part of that is that you have a lot of variation in level of play from set to set when all that really counts is how many sets you win.

Part of that may be due to this team being prone to inconsistent play.

Hard to tell from following on live stats but seemed like at times the pace of this match was really slow. But again live stats don't always reflect the reality of what is happening in the match. I'll catch a replay sometime this weekend.

[RoyalShock]

First match I've attended, or seen all of this year. I know this will sound negative as the mistakes are what stand out most.

Temple's back row play looked much better than ours. Their digs were good and mostly kept them in system. The Shocks seemed to struggle in the first 2-3 sets to get their passes to the setter in good position. It looked like we were doing much better later in the match, though.

We came out of at least three timeouts and immediately made mistakes. Two were poor serve-receives leading to aces, and another was a service error. One of those started a run for Temple. I don't know if that's been a theme this year or not.

Lots of runs by both teams except in one set that was tight throughout. The third set, I think.

But the ladies played tough and it was nice to finally see a win while in atrendance.

[Critter's Pa]

Week 1 of conference play is in the books. There are 5 2-0 teams, 3 1-1 teams, and 5 0-2 teams. The only undefeated teams that will play next weekend are Rice at Tulsa. If both Wichita and Rice win on Friday, the Shockers will host the second undefeated matchup of the weekend.

The Shockers rank fairly high in the conference-only statistics, not so much when statistics from non-con matches are included. We also played a much tougher schedule than most other teams in the AAC. Nebraska #2, Kansas #9, and Arizona State #14 are all ranked as of last weekend, and Arkansas is RV. Indiana is no longer RV. Wonder where we will be when the official RPI comes out.

Here is where WSU ranks statistically in the AAC: (I will also include next weeks opponents- UAB and Rice for comparison. Again, this is only after 2 conference games. WSU, UAB, and Rice have all played 8 sets in AAC play.)

Stat - WSU's rank... UAB's rank... Rice's rank

Points/set- #2- 18.75... #8- 14.88... #4- 17.25
Opponent Hitting%- #3-.162... #8- .209... #7- .204
Hitting%- #1- .318... #7- .204... #4- .236
Opponent Assists/set- #7- 11.50... #9- 11.75... #4- 10.13
Assists/set- #3- 13.13... #11- 9.88... #5- 12.38
Opponent Kills/set- #5- 11.63... #7- 12.38... #4- 11.38
Kills/set- #1- 15.13... #11- 11.00... #4- 14.00
Opponent Blocks/set- #3- 1.38... #1-1.06... #10-2.38
Blocks/set- #8- 1.88... #5- 2.38... #9-1.75
Opponent Aces/set- #10- 1.88... #11 2.50... #3 0.75
Aces/set- #3- 1.75...T#5- 1.50... T#5- 1.50
Opponent Digs/set- #2- 12.63... #13- 18.25... #4- 13.88
Digs/set- #6- 15.50... #1- 17.38... #4- 16.75

Opponent Aces/set is the only stat where the Shockers find themselves in the lower third of the conference. WSU gives up a little over one more ace/set than Rice, and UAB give up almost one more ace/set than WSU.

We are the only team hitting over .300 in the conference, North Texas is second at .255. The difference between our hitting percentage and opponents hitting percentage is .156. The only other team that has a difference above .100 is North Texas at .139.

Some individual, conference-only odds and ends:
Maddie is hitting .533 (17 1 30) Rice has three players that are hitting over .340.
Emmerson is #4 with 29 kills and #5 in kills/set at 3.63
Gonzo is #8 with 24 kills and in kill/set at 3.00
Izzi leads in assists with 85 and is #3 with 10.63 Assists/set. She also leads the team in digs with 29 for 3.63 digs/set. Annalie has 28 digs for 3.5 digs/set.
Annalie and Swifty both have 4 aces (.50/set). The 2 leaders in the AAC both have 5 aces.

[WuDrWu]

I think we'd be a borderline at large team were Gabby healthy and on the floor. Our back row play just hasn't been good enough. No way around it. Izzy has been forced to scramble far too often (some of it her own doing by not trusting her teammates, which I get) and hasn't been as good as she was at the end of last season and both of those things have led to a less than efficient front row scoring that has been good enough in system but not good enough out of system.

There's no doubt in my mind we're better with Maddie in the middle. Having her healthy makes this team deeper and more dangerous. BL has been solid and Alyssa has shown she can be capable in the future. She needs consistency and reps but the talent and ability is there. Stout is really good even though we've had to rely on her way too much so far.

I've seen Tulsa a couple of times and I'd be surprised if we get them. They're way more physical than we are.

[BAShocker]

“Izzy has been forced to scramble far to often…”

100% agree!

[1972Shocker]

I think we'd be a borderline at large team were Gabby healthy and on the floor. Our back row play just hasn't been good enough. No way around it. Izzy has been forced to scramble far too often (some of it her own doing by not trusting her teammates, which I get) and hasn't been as good as she was at the end of last season and both of those things have led to a less than efficient front row scoring that has been good enough in system but not good enough out of system.

I agree that we clearly miss Gabi. This surprised me a little bit because our "littles" seemed to be coming on at the end of last season and they were being hyped as a strength of the team prior to this season. Hopefully, when Gabi returns next year she is a good as before, although you never know with an ACL how a player will comeback.

[1972Shocker]

I have mixed feelings about Emerson's play. I think she is adequate, although not dominating on the front row. I don't think she really scares any of our opponents. I think she is a plus blocker. But her serve and pass game doesn't really support her being a 6-rotation player in my opinion. I suppose the need for a 6 rotations player is to preserve substitutions and guess she is our best option.

Hopefully, her back row play picks up. She is certainly a target of our opponents serves when she is on the back row and that may be affecting the play of the "littles" as they perhaps try to cover some for Emerson instead of just focusing on their job.

[flyingMoose]

This is the first Weekly Award of any level for a Shocker this year.

[flyingMoose]

The NCAA has yet to release its first 2024 RPI - but later today?

Figstats has the Shockers at 68. Other AAC teams are Rice at 53, Tulsa at 63, East Carolina at 72, and USF at 110.

Pablo also has the same teams in the same order as the top five in the AAC.

[WuDrWu]

I watched a tiny bit of FAU. I certainly remembered Valaria Rosado who killed us last year, but knew they were missing someone. So I dug and found Arianna Beckham who abused us for 19 kills down there last season. Not on the '24 roster so I assume, correctly, that she was a Free Agent in the off season. She landed at Mississippi State. Where she is a big part of the Aggies lineup.....along with Kalin Newsome. For anyone that doesn't remember, Kalin spent a year at WSU in between stints at SELA. Finding a Covid year, she's at Miss State and appears to be their best 6 rotation player. Leads the team in kills and a variety of other stats. MSU is 7-3 with wins over UAB, Memphis and Tulane as well as a 1-0 record in the SEC (over South Carolina) but the cupcake portion of their schedule is just about over. Tennessee, Florida, Arkansas and others are just around the corner for the Bulldogs.