Shocker Volleyball Classic - Fri 9/2 and Sat 9/3

[1972Shocker]

It would be awesome, and supremely appreciated if you could!

I did not look for them last night I will check on them this afternoons match.

[WuDrWu]

I don't know what to think after last night.

There were times in the first set I was thinking this is the best WSU team I've ever watched.

Then like @1972Shocker: said, the end of the 1st set happened and it was downhill from there.

I have a hard time believing we only had 4 return errors. I thought we were awful on serve receive. Emily was chasing passes all night.

I thought we looked tired at times......I can't imagine what we'll look like tonight against a Marquette team that is more balanced than Cincinnati.

Seems like Lambo is still tinkering, and I don't blame him. I realize Jordan Thompson is a problem but we've got to dig and pass better or it's going to be a long season.

Jordan is one of the best players ever to play on Devlin Court. She was spectacular.

We just flushed all the benefit of last weekend. We need to sweep today, and frankly after watching Marquette yesterday, I don't see how we can.

[flyingMoose]

I did not look for them last night I will check on them this afternoons match.

I think the posters are tonight's promotion (with poster-signing after the match) and were not available last night.

[1972Shocker]

I think the posters are tonight's promotion (with poster-signing after the match) and were not available last night.

With a 7:30 match that potentially could be pretty late. Plus if the Shocks lose not sure I would really want to put the Ladies through that. Or maybe not wanting to put myself through that or expose the young ladies ot a grumpy old man.

[1972Shocker]

I don't know what to think after last night.

There were times in the first set I was thinking this is the best WSU team I've ever watched.

Then like @1972Shocker said, the end of the 1st set happened and it was downhill from there.

I have a hard time believing we only had 4 return errors. I thought we were awful on serve receive. Emily was chasing passes all night.

I thought we looked tired at times......I can't imagine what we'll look like tonight against a Marquette team that is more balanced than Cincinnati.

Seems like Lambo is still tinkering, and I don't blame him. I realize Jordan Thompson is a problem but we've got to dig and pass better or it's going to be a long season.

Jordan is one of the best players ever to play on Devlin Court. She was spectacular.

We just flushed all the benefit of last weekend. We need to sweep today, and frankly after watching Marquette yesterday, I don't see how we can.

I suppose the silver lining is that as poorly as we played from 24-16 in the 1st set on we still had a shot of sending the match into a 5th set and stealing a win we probably didn't deserve.

In fact, we probably should have won that 4th set. The Shocks lead 24-22 before giving up the final 4 points of the set. IIRC, the Shocks were up 24-23 with Cincy serving. A very poor dig attempt by Dani lead to free ball for Cincy and Jordan Thompson cashed in to tie it at 24. The Shocks pretty much sucked on the next two points to end the match.

We were passing very well in Set 1 but for some reason we could not sustain that. We just were not passing well enough to get consistently good swings for the remainder of the match. I don't know if Cincy was doing anything different in their serving approach after Set 1 but the Shocks passing was all of a sudden missing in action.

The Shocks did do a pretty good job blocking despite Cincy's superior fire power out blocking the Bearcats 10-7 with Abbie leading the way.

Lambo was tinkering but some of that is just what he does. He was definitely searching but unfortunately nothing he tried really worked very well. This is a little concerning considering the amount of experience we have returning. Katie Reilly's graduation may be more significant that we realized it would be.

[1972Shocker]

Marquette is up on Cincy in this morning's match 2-1 by scores of 25-21, 19-25 and 25-20.

Marquette is doing a much better job of controlling Cincy's Jordan Thompson that the Shockers were able to do last night. Thompson has 10 kills and 8 attack errors on 33 attempts so far against Marquette for a .061 hitting percentage.

[boyshocker]

Slept on this but still was a frustrating night. I realize CL is known for tinkering but wonder if we won't stabilize until the line up does. Not sure why we kept setting Mikaela when she had #23 blocking her, hard matchup for her to win. Passing/digging is struggling, best one we got right now is Jody. Like my kid said she shouldn't be getting as many digs as the libero/ ds. With that said Abby should get about 20 kills this afternoon and we can gather ourselves for a big match tonight!!

[1972Shocker]

Marquette finishes off Cincinnati with a 25-21 win in the 4th set.

[1972Shocker]

On Thursday Missouri State was swept by #15 Hawaii in Honolulu but they were competitive losing 16, 22 and 22.

On Friday Missouri State took the 1st set from #8 UCLA in Honolulu 25-21 but lost the next 3 sets 16, 18 and 15.

No. 22 Creighton swept UNI in Los Angeles 20, 30 and 25 in a very competitive effort.

http://www.mvc-sports.com/volleyball/schedule/#.V8r_6PkrKM8

[WuDrWu]

Shocks sweep IUPUI 14, 20, 9

Although WSU hit .423 for the match, it seemed more to do with IUPUI being bad than WSU good.

Clearly our ladies will have their hands full tonight against Marquette.

[flyingMoose]

I agree - we were crisper, but was it us or them that made the difference? At least, we didn't run into each other like last night.

We ran the 5-1 all match with Regan coming in to set the last five points of the match. Dani was the libero the whole match.

No idea about comments on Lamb's post-game show. Although I could get the Internet (WSU Guest) on the concourse, the game audio was not available. I let someone know who was going to tell Facilities, but nothing changed by the end of the match.

[1972Shocker]

Shocks sweep IUPUI 14, 20, 9

Although WSU hit .423 for the match, it seemed more to do with IUPUI being bad than WSU good.

Clearly our ladies will have their hands full tonight against Marquette.

Yeah, hard to know what to take away from this match other than the Shocks are able to dominate a lesser opponent. Shocks were very solid in Sets 1 and 3. Pretty so-so in Set 2.

I will say Tabitha's service run early in Set 3 was pretty impressive and it ended on a net violation by the Shocks. It is not all that common for a player with a power serve like Tabitha's to serve with that kind of consistent accuracy. That was 9 serve run that included 2 aces to go with an earlier ace. If she can do that consistenty her serve could become a valuable weapon.

As you say tonight will be a better measuring stick. Hopefully, we show better than we did against Cincy.

BTW I checked out the new Shocker Hall of Fame interactive kiosk with the touch screen. I like it. Mulitple photos of the Hall of Famers in action plus and extended biography on the few that I check out. And again the Shocker History wall is terrfic IMHO. I give the athletic department a thumbs up on those improvements.

[shocks771]

Nice sweep of Marquette tonight. Decent weekend, could have been really good if we would have played a little better last night, but definitely showed some guts coming back and playing well today. Only 3-2 but we have two strong resume wins with a chance to get a few more resume builders next weekend.

[flyingMoose]

Nice sweep of Marquette tonight.

14, 22, 20

[flyingMoose]

This match demonstrated how important serve-receive is. When we passed well (most of this match except the start of the second set), you can run your offense and score. When we don't pass well (much of last night when Cincinnati served very tough), it gets hard to win.