Shocker Volleyball Classic

[SPEShockAlum]

How many Top 25 opponents have we played this year? Three - Arizona State, Hawaii and Creighton? Even with consecutive tournament wins prior to this one, how important is the Valley season now (knowing that it's always important, of course)? Did those invitationals do us any favors?

[pogo]

How many Top 25 opponents have we played this year? Three - Arizona State, Hawaii and Creighton? Even with consecutive tournament wins prior to this one, how important is the Valley season now (knowing that it's always important, of course)? Did those invitationals do us any favors?

I believe that these losses were important for the women and the staff to be able to plot how their weakness's were exploited and what they need to work on to correct them. Any loss is not a good one but these are not as bad as losing to a non ranked opponent. As HCCL stated in the paper this morning that this team is a lot like last years. They will get better and he believes they will wind up a similar team to last year.

[1972Shocker]

Did those invitationals do us any favors?

Coach Lamb has learned that if you want to be in a position to receive an at-large invitation to the NCAA Tournament as a Valley team it is essential that you try to find as many quality opponents as you can in the non-conference portion of the season to build an adequate RPI and resume. Beating teams like UVU, VCU (who Lambo said could be ranked by the end of the year), Utah State, Fresno State and Tennessee are very valuable in this regard and while you don't like to lose matches to teams like ASU, Hawaii and Creighton those probably also help in this regard. Plus as @pogo says it tells you where you are and what you need to work on to be ready to take on NCAA quality teams if you are fortunate enough to make the dance. The tournaments are not only valuable but indispensable.

[WuDrWu]

Might be in a position to have to beat Louisville now. Can't afford to have any bad losses if you want an at large. I don't think I'd want to be, say, 25-9 with my best win over VCU.

Now, I fully believe WSU is a very worthy at large team, and should be there if they finish like they should (something around 16-2 in conference, plus beat Louisville and get to the finals of the Valley tourney) which would put them around 28-6. However, with no high quality wins, nothing is for certain.

[1972Shocker]

Good analysis @WuDrWu: and the Shocks can start with another key match coming up Friday night vs UNI in Cedar Falls. A 2-0 start in Valley play with a home win over MSU and a road win at UNI would definitely be a nice way to start the conference season. At that point the schedule lightens up for a while and perhaps Lambo can get some of the fine tuning need accomplished before Louisville comes to town.

[flyingMoose]

Good analysis @WuDrWu and the Shocks can start with another key match coming up Friday night vs UNI in Cedar Falls. A 2-0 start in Valley play with a home win over MSU and a road win at UNI would definitely be a nice way to start the conference season. At that point the schedule lightens up for a while and perhaps Lambo can get some of the fine tuning need accomplished before Louisville comes to town.

In the Sunday post-game, Lambo was bemoaning the fact that they will get only two days of practice (they are taking today off and Thursday is a travel day) before playing UNI, while UNI played Friday at Loyola and do not play again until they see us. Nevertheless, he would still do the tournament.

[JayJ79]

WSU is probably the only team that has a decent chance of an at-large bid. the numbers for the conference are just down this year. Creighton leaving puts a hurt on things, and the league just doesn't have any overly impressive wins like they've had in previous years. And UNI's inexperienced team had more early-season losses than usual, so they don't prop up the conference numbers like they normally do most years.

[JayShocks]

We hung tough with a top 10 team and lost a close one to Creighton. I think this makes us better in the long run but having to go on the road now, we will see what we are made of. I wish we would have scheduled an easy game at home before we hit the road though.

[flyingMoose]

Ashley is Valley Player of the Week.

[1972Shocker]

Ashley is Valley Player of the Week.

I know Elizabeth was selected to the pre-season All-Valley team, but I think when the smoke clears Ashley will be the more likely of the two to make 1st team All-Valley even with so many teams concentrating on stopping Ashley. She can really whack on the attack.

[WuDrWu]

I know Elizabeth was selected to the pre-season All-Valley team, but I think when the smoke clears Ashley will be the more likely of the two to make 1st team All-Valley even with so many teams concentrating on stopping Ashley. She can really whack on the attack.

I agree. Frankly, I was surprised Elizabeth was chosen over Ashley in the first place. Nothing against Elizabeth mind you, but Ashley really came on late last season and yes, she has a cannon for an arm and appears to really have dedicated herself in the offseason.

[1972Shocker]

After drawing a relatively pedestrian 1,938 fans for Creighton on Sunday the Shocks average 2,582 fans for the 4 home matches played this past weekend.

Considering the competition included one of our primary challengers for a Valley Title (MSU), a top 10 team, a top 25 team and a very solid and competitive South Dakota team this would seem to lend support to the suggestion that WSU has, in fact, hit a plateau in terms of VB attendance.

We have 3 matches remaining that might draw decent crowds, the Italian National Team, Louisville and UNI. My guess is none of the stats or attendance for the Italian National Team will count in our official totals.

Hopefully, we can keep the average at 2,500 or better for the season. The last time we were below 2,500 in average attendance was in 2006.

[ShockerFever]

After drawing a relatively pedestrian 1,938 fans for Creighton on Sunday the Shocks average 2,582 fans for the 4 home matches played this past weekend.

Considering the competition included one of our primary challengers for a Valley Title (MSU), a top 10 team, a top 25 team and a very solid and competitive South Dakota team this would seem to lend support to the suggestion that WSU has, in fact, hit a plateau in terms of VB attendance.

We have 3 matches remaining that might draw decent crowds, the Italian National Team, Louisville and UNI. My guess is none of the stats or attendance for the Italian National Team will count in our official totals.

Hopefully, we can keep the average at 2,500 or better for the season. The last time we were below 2,500 in average attendance was in 2006.

Or we could look at the other end of the spectrum and speculate how well or not well the classic was marketed to the fanbase/community. Again, the only promo I saw regarding last weekend's festivities was on the goshockers.com page. That was it. That certainly will not help reminding those that are not volleyball fanatics of what was going on. I thought that was a pretty poor job by the marketing department, sans a last ditch effort days before the classic to finally start talking about it on social media.

By the way, I'd like to know how many took advantage of the free ticket/food donation offer. I went in on it and found myself being the only one walking up with canned goods into Koch Saturday night. Don't ya think with a free admission offer that more people would have probably taken advantage of that? Again, I didn't hear about it until literally a day before the event and that's because it was ON THIS WEBSITE. I don't think it had a chance.

And it also didn't help to put on a Sunday afternoon match during NFL season and then a Thursday night match with the Chiefs playing. Both out of WSU's control I'm sure, but those are also likely causes for low numbers.

And unfortunately, with a less than stellar showing in their first home matches, it really won't help any future matters unless things in the marketing department take a complete 180.

[1972Shocker]

I think Lambo pretty much turn himself inside out and upside down to accommodate getting this tournament in and the scheduling was complicated by the WSU-MSU Valley opener. While I agree that the marketing wasn't great I think you can also make the argument that it doesn't really make good business sense to spend promotion dollars on free admissions where those admissions are unlikely to generate any significant number of regular paying customers. Past experience would seem to suggest that the freebies really have not done much to produce growing season ticket sales or growth in attendance of paying customers.

I think WSU Volleyball is pretty well established and known in the community at this point and I think we have built a decent core of volleyball fans which apparently has pretty much reached its saturation point. Spending a lot of money on promotions at this point would seem to have diminishing returns. Financially you are better off with a crowd of 2,500 full-price paying fans vs 5,000 fans attending at deep discounts especially if those deep discounts don't really produce any payback down the road.

The bottom line is that the net dollars generated are more important than artificially inflating attendance and from what I can tell our program does pretty well by that benchmark especially when you add-in the VB101 revenue and the Match Club memberships.

[ShockerFever]

I agree with pretty much everything you're saying except I think things have gone a bit off-tangent. You were the one complaining about the lousy attendance figures throughout the weekend and I offered up some reasons why. If we are not going to promote anything, even free admission matches, then I guess we can't complain about getting *only* 1,900 for a Sunday volleyball match. That's all I'm saying.

And we say *only 1,900* because we have high expectations for our fanbase and program when, in fact, that number would and has put us in the Top 10 or 20 nationally in volleyball attendance. I don't think the sport nationally as a whole is ever going to generate more than what it's putting out now. You have the crazy big numbers at Hawaii and Nebraska, but I think most are happy, accept, and would be thrilled getting a couple thousand fans to a college volleyball match.

With all that said, I still think we could have done way better this past weekend given our program, our opponents, and the promotions offered. It's just not enough people knew about it or the timing was off I'm afraid.