Shocks @ Loyola and @ Bradley

[bunck]

We lose the 1st 22-25.

[bunck]

11-4 2nd.

[bunck]

We won the 2nd 25-11, 1-1.

[bunck]

Take the 3rd 25-19. 2-1.

[bunck]

Win the 4th 25-17, 3-1.

[1972Shocker]

Shocks clinch a 1st round bye in the Valley Tournament with this weekend's wins over Loyola and Bradley, neither of which were a cakewalk although the Shocks finished off Bradley in strong fashion after a poor opening set. Lambo said he thought his team is a little fatigued and hoped to give them some time to recharge this week before taking on MSU in Springfield in the regular season finale next Friday.

[1972Shocker]

Ashley Andrade continued her fantastic senior season leading the Shocks against Bradley with 16 kills on 25 attacks with only 1 error for a 0.600 hitting percentage plus 8 block assists and with 1 assist and 2 digs thrown in for good measure.

Dani Mostrom had a season and career high 30 digs plus she chipped in 3 assists.

Sam Sanders also had a very good match hitting 13-2-42 = 0.262 plus 3 block assists.

Chelsey had another double-double with 44 assists and 10 digs.

[flyingMoose]

Shocks clinch a 1st round bye in the Valley Tournament with this weekend's wins over Loyola and Bradley, neither of which were a cakewalk although the Shocks finished off Bradley in strong fashion after a poor opening set. Lambo said he thought his team is a little fatigued and hoped to give them some time to recharge this week before taking on MSU in Springfield in the regular season finale next Friday.

And he was singing the praises of Ashlyn. Not often lately a left side is getting good things said about them in the post-game. He also said Alyssa has been struggling lately which he attributes to a freshman playing her first a-college-season-is-longer-than-a-high-school-season year.

[WuDrWu]

Big match Friday could determine the conference champion and #1 seed. First, UNI is likely to sweep at home this weekend and finish 15-3. WSU will have to beat MSU to tie UNI (no easy feat) and make this discussion necessary.

First tiebreak is head to head so since we went 1-1 it's on to #2.

If SIU beats ISU then SIU is going to finish 3rd unless they collapse against Evansville. WSU compares a home win against SIU to UNI's road win at ISU. WSU wins and gets the 1 seed. If ISU wins, then it's a 3 way tie for 3rd. SIU would lose the tiebreaker and drop to 5th, giving UNI the 1 seed.

At least that's how I see it.

[JayJ79]

Drake was slated to play at Illinois State this afternoon, but Central Illinois was hit by some major severe weather and they have lots of power outages. Will be interesting to see if they get the match in.

[1972Shocker]

Big match Friday could determine the conference champion and #1 seed. First, UNI is likely to sweep at home this weekend and finish 15-3. WSU will have to beat MSU to tie UNI (no easy feat) and make this discussion necessary.

First tiebreak is head to head so since we went 1-1 it's on to #2.

If SIU beats ISU then SIU is going to finish 3rd unless they collapse against Evansville. WSU compares a home win against SIU to UNI's road win at ISU. WSU wins and gets the 1 seed. If ISU wins, then it's a 3 way tie for 3rd. SIU would lose the tiebreaker and drop to 5th, giving UNI the 1 seed.

At least that's how I see it.

I'm not sure the difference between a #1 seed and a #2 amounts to much this year. In any case, you always want to defeat MSU and you want to go into the Valley Tournament feeling good about your team. I will be driving to Springfield on Friday to cheer the Ladies on. I know they were working on a bus trip go Springfield but I don't know for sure if they were able to put that together or not.

[1972Shocker]

I don't really know if we still have a shot at an at-large NCAA bid or not. If we do, then defeating MSU is critical. We might still be in a position for an at-large bid if we defeat MSU on Friday and make it to the Championship game of the Valley Tournament and that may not be enough, but anything less certainly would seem to be a very severe body blow to our at-large chances.

I just don't see UNI losing to either Bradley or Loyola in Cedar Falls next weekend. Shocks need the win over MSU for a co-championship with UNI and to perhaps keep their at-large hopes alive. That's a lot to play for.

[1972Shocker]

Ashley Andrade is the Valley's Player of the Week and Dani Mostrom is the Valley's Freshman of the Week.

http://www.goshockers.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=7500&ATCLID=209314881

Congrats Ladies.

That was Ashley's 5th Player of the Week selection. I sense the possibility of Valley Player of the Year honors could be coming Ashley's way. We will see. Chelsey Feekin is in the mix for that award as well and I assume at least one UNI player will have to be in the mix. And, of course, Ashley and Kelsey could split the vote. The impressive thing with Ashley is she has put up fantastic numbers in a year where most of our opponents are keying their defenses to stop or at least slow her down.

[flyingMoose]

Our RPI ranking remains at 49. A poster on the Volley Talk board says that in the last two years, the last-in at-large RPIs were 47 and 46.

@JayJ79, where are we in the Pablo rankings?