Shocks Host Loyola (Friday), Bradley (Satruday) and SIU (Monday)

[1972Shocker]

After playing 11 of their 1st 15 matches away from Koch Arena the Shocks are back home for 3 matches starting with Loyola (8-9, 3-1) on Friday at 7:00 pm, Bradley (6-9, 1-3) on Saturday at 7:00 pm and Southern Illinois (13-6, 4-1) on Monday at 7:00 pm.

Currently SIU is tied for 1st place in the Valley with ILS at 4-1 and Loyola and the Shockers are tied for 3rd at 3-1. Bradley is tied for 8th at 1-3. Obviously, it will be very important for the Shockers to take care of business against LOY and SIU at home.

Loyola appears to have an improving program and they handed SIU their only Valley loss so far with a 4-set 23, 20, (23), 21 win over SIU last last Saturday in Chicago. Loyola also won at Indiana State (3-1) in 5 sets and swept Evansville at home. Their Valley loss was a 3-1 loss to Illinois State. Loyola has been pretty competitive in most of their matches. This is not a team you want to overlook.

Bradley should be the easiest touch of this 3-game home set, but SIU on Monday should be a challenging match.

Promotions:
Loyola Match - $5 admission for all fans who were PINK in support of Breast Cancer Research and Awareness
Bradley Match - Free admission for all kids 12 & under in uniform (volleyball uniforms?) and also free admission for Girl Scouts (in uniform I assume) plus $5 tickets for their families.
Southern Illinois - Free admission to all area students, teachers, faculty and staff with valid ID or donate a book for National Book Month

Loyola and Bradley Match Notes

[flyingMoose]

The volleyball article from the Eagle with an emphasis on serving.

Lambo notes the the aces-to-errors ratio is about .5 when he wants it to be at least .68. Dani and Emily have good numbers, but Tabitha has a ratio .29 with 38 errors, more than double anyone else on the team. However, even deducting her numbers, the team ratio is only .58.

An aside. During the Olympics, the commentators noted that Coach Karch Kiraly of the WNT banned jump-serves by his team. As I recall, their staff thought the key factor was serving into spaces in the defensive alignment. So, yeah, I wish Tabitha was banned from using the jump-serve - it looks spectacular, but is just not doing her any good.

[1972Shocker]

The Shocker matches with Loyola on Friday and SIU on Monday are clearly the key Valley matches of this weekend cycle with Loyola's trip to MSU on Saturday also being one to keep in eye on.

Lambo would like to see the Shocks serving numbers improve. The Shocks have a service ace to service error ratio of 49.2% (60 aces to 122 service errors). Lambo would like to be at least a 68% ratio. Their 1.1 aces per set is acceptable and pretty typical for Lambo teams that don't include Sara Younes but but the rate of errors is too high for his liking.

Among players who have seen significant court time Emily is has the best ratio with 9 aces and only 4 errors. After that Dani, Gabi and Giorgia (who is now out for the season) all meet that threshold each with 7 aces to 10 errors. Jody at 7 to 11 and Mikaela at 5 to 8 are around 63%. As a group those ladies have a ration of 79.2% which is well above Lambo's target.

Tabiha leads the team in aces with 11 and clearly has one of the most powerful serves in the Valley. She also has one of the more erratic services in the Vallley with 38 service errors for a ration of 29%. Hanna has 1 service ace and 8 service errors and Abbie has 1 service ace and 14 service errors.

One stat that is not available is the total serves by per player which would let you compare the rate of service errors to total serves made. I am sure Lambo has those stats and probably knows the oppnents side out % against each of his players when they are serving.

So Lambo has a couple areas of concern. That being the play of his defensive specialist and the quality of serving. As he mentions in the article good serving makes defense easier. Its all intertwined.

A couple of things to keep an eye on over the next 3 matches.

[1972Shocker]

An aside. During the Olympics, the commentators noted that Coach Karch Kiraly of the WNT banned jump-serves by his team. As I recall, their staff thought the key factor was serving into spaces in the defensive alignment. So, yeah, I wish Tabitha was banned from using the jump-serve - it looks spectacular, but is just not doing her any good.

Here are a couple of articles where Koach Karch discusses his serving philosophy:

http://www.teamusa.org/USA-Volleyball/USA-Teams/Karch-Kiralys-Blog/Tough-Serves-Have-One-Thing-In-Common-They-Go-In

https://www.theartofcoachingvolleyball.com/why-the-jump-float-is-karch-kiralys-favorite-serve/

On the second link I think there is an error. The narrative said he likes the two-handed toss, however, in the video I believe he says he prefers the one-hand toss for the reasons mentioned in the narrative of regarding being locked and loaded. Although he says they have world-class servers that use a two-hand toss so either is acceptable.

I'm no expert but it I believe Emily Heibert uses a jump float serve with a two handed toss. Emily has the best aces to errors ratio on the Shocker team at 9 to 4.

[boyshocker]

The volleyball article from the Eagle with an emphasis on serving.

Lambo notes the the aces-to-errors ratio is about .5 when he wants it to be at least .68. Dani and Emily have good numbers, but Tabitha has a ratio .29 with 38 errors, more than double anyone else on the team. However, even deducting her numbers, the team ratio is only .58.

An aside. During the Olympics, the commentators noted that Coach Karch Kiraly of the WNT banned jump-serves by his team. As I recall, their staff thought the key factor was serving into spaces in the defensive alignment. So, yeah, I wish Tabitha was banned from using the jump-serve - it looks spectacular, but is just not doing her any good.

Couldn't agree more Moose, wondered this for some time. At the time we thought Gabby or Danny should have been serving for her. The other thing with Tabitha and Abby is they end up playing defense after they serve and I would guess good teams know to hit at them. I am glad to hear what Karch said, we have heard that the jump top spin is not that hard to return for a good passer. I would guess if you can serve to a spot and take them out of their offense you have done your job.

[boyshocker]

There is also one stat I would love to see and that would include just games against teams that are .500 or better. Seems volleyball (and basketball) can provide some great numbers against weaker opponents.

[1972Shocker]

I will say that a good, consistent jump serve can be very effective at the college level. At the level the WNT plays the quality and abilities of the defensive players is no doubt significantly higher then the average college team will present. Therefore, a jump serve may not be the way to go at the national team level.

Still if you are going to go with the jump serve you still need to consistent enough with it to make it worthwhile. It does not appear that Tabitha is their yet.

Shocker Hall of Famer Sara Younes was an example of a very, very worthwhile jump serve. Of course, a Sara Younes may only come around once in a blue moon.

In her Shocker career Sara recorded 351 aces and 401 service errors for an 87.5% ace to error ratio. She averaged 0.84 aces per set during her career. The 2nd best number in Shocker history for an individual player was Kori Rosenkranz at 0.40 aces per set. Kori is also 2nd in career aces at 172. So Sara doubled up the numbers of the next most effective server in Shocker history.

Her numbers in her sophomore and junior seasons were 222 aces to 229 errors (97% ratio) averaging 1.01 aces per set. Keep in mind that recent Shocker teams average about 1.0 to 1.2 aces per set.

Not expecting Tabitha to ever come close to those numbers (no one else has in Shocker history) which are really kind of mind-boggling. Perhaps Sara is the exception that proves the rule in this case.

I do have a bit of soft spot for Sara's serving. It was Sara's unbelievable serving that reeled me into to Shocker volleyball when I attended my 1st match on September 13, 2003 against San Diego State. Sara put on a totally unexpected and jaw dropping performance with school record 14 service aces in a 3-1 win. Looking back I see she dropped 11 aces the day before in a sweep of Nichols State. 25 service aces in 7 sets. That is sort of like video game volleyball I guess. Sarah has 9 of the top 10 serving matches in terms of aces in Shocker history. She wasn't bad.

They say records are made to be broken. I am not holding my breath for that to happen with Sara's WSU servings records.

[boyshocker]

If we vote, Sara is the best server I have seen at WSU.

[boyshocker]

Anyone have a guess to who the littles will be tonight? Grimes, Kara? (freshman) will we see new faces?

[1972Shocker]

Anyone have a guess to who the littles will be tonight? Grimes, Kara? (freshman) will we see new faces?

My guess would be Dani at the Libero, with Hanna, Gabi and Kara (Bown) rotating through the back line. I guess you never know when a Meghan Grimes, Emma Tynan or an Aspen Kridner might break out in practice and earn a shot although I think that is a long shot at this point. Also Lambo pulled Kara's redshirt last week. I doubt he would want to do that again with Aspen unless she just forces his hand with outstanding work in practice.

Lambo has always stressed the importance and value of experience so I think he will probably go for the most part with his most experienced players (Dani, Gabi and Hanna). However, I would like to see what Kara Bown can deliver but more importantly we need to win this match.

[boyshocker]

Amen to that. Coach seemed pretty upset last week, probably the worse I can remember, just hope he doesn't try to re-invent the wheel with new lineups. Fix the passing/digging and we are very good.

[flyingMoose]

Shocker Hall of Famer Sara Younes was an example of a very, very worthwhile jump serve.

In some jump-serve discussion somewhere, it was noted that if the ball is curving, the serve is more difficult to receive. Micha Hancock, a left-handed setter for Penn State from a couple of years back, had a wicked jump-serve that curved a lot. Maybe Sara's ball moved in the same way. Plus there were far fewer jump-servers in her day which was to her advantage - but certainly not enough to account for her outstanding numbers.

[Shox21]

Our National Anthem is not a poorly arranged, off-key pop song and I really hope I NEVER have to be subjected to that rendition again.

[flyingMoose]

Our National Anthem is not a poorly arranged, off-key pop song and I really hope I NEVER have to be subjected to that rendition again.

+1

[flyingMoose]

Shockers 3-0 Loyola
15, 25, 20

No littles other than Dani on the court tonight. Tabitha and Michaela became six-position players in addition to Jody.

We hit .327 v .252. Loyola came into the match hitting in the .190s. We led in blocks 6-3. Our aces-errors was 0 while the Ramblers was -10.

Jody was 12-3-26 for .346, Abbie was 10-2-16 for .500 as an M1, Mikaela was 9-2-24 for .292 and Katy was 6-1-14 for .357.

In the post-game, Mike asked Lambo his opinion on the defense. Chris quoted some numbers, but I thought his response was non-committal.