Lady Shocks @ Indiana State (Fri, 10/14) & Illinois State (Sun, 10/16)

[boyshocker]

Finally watched the match last night and it seemed that Emily was chasing a lot of balls. I agree we are hitting too many back row attacks, think the surprise element is gone. It also seemed that we had either off sets or off swings at times, not sure which but we sure weren't getting in our sweet spots.

[1972Shocker]

Lambo appears to have the non-con scheduling down to an art. Of course, you have to win some of those matches against teams that will have good records.

True, but as you say it is somewhat of an art and sometimes you need a bit of lady luck as you just never know how an opponent will perform over the course of a season. Still Lambo clearly understands what he is trying to achieve with his non-conference schedule.

[JayPak]

While that is true, some teams are always a safe bet to do well... Texas in the Big 12, Colorado State in the Mountain West, Creighton in the Big East, to name three that Lambo nailed.

[1972Shocker]

Lambo Weekly Radio Show:

Illinois State is not typically aggressive out of system as they trust and rely on their Libero and their defense. However, the Shocks kind of fell into the same pattern and was overly passive in Lambo's view including Emily's set selection may not have been a bit passive.

Talked about 2nd set rally. Lambo said 9 point runs are very rare in rally scoring especially at the end of games. Credited Dani with her service run and said his team defended very well during the comeback.

Last 5 matches 20 aces to 19 errors in 16 sets. Two players have half those errors. Lambo said he has established rates that he wants to achieve. The Valley serves at about an 8% error rate. 4 of his 6 setters aren't going to get a lot of aces so he wants them with lower than an 8% error rate. He can live with a higher error rate if a player has a tougher serve like Tabitha but overall he wants to stay at an 8% error rate or better. He seemed to be pleased with how the current approach is working.

Good week for the Valley in terms of RPI. WSU, SIU, UNI and MSU are all in the top 63 (as reported by @flyingMoose:). He said Illinois State has become a real land mine because they are good enough to beat any of the Valley's top 4.

Talked about the difficulty in projecting how non-con opponents would do. Talked about Stanford and Arkansas as examples of where an injury and/or departure can really impact a team. Said he saw Arkansas earlier in the year (Spring) and they looked really good. However, they have had an injury and a departure and what looked like would be a good win for MSU this year is now not looking so hot.

Talking about Abbie's blocking and how good she is at moving her hands.

Talked about Emily's VPOW and Abbie's VDPOW. Lambo said the irony is that he didn't think this was one of Emily's better weeks. Apparently, she wasn't feeling 100% plus the new lineup is still a work in process. Talked about Emily's presence on the floor (which the ILS coach complimented her on). Lambo said Emily was not a D1-ready setter when she arrived at WSU and she has worked very hard to make herself into the player she is.

Great sense of timing where Emily wins a lot of jousts on overpasses against bigger people. Even I have noticed this so it must standout.

Just one match this week. A big one with Missouri State. MSU has won 7 in a row since losing their 1st two matches of the year inclucing the Valley opener at home to the Shocks.

MSU seems to be rolling now.

Lambo said he is still evaluating how the new lineup is working and he is never averse to tweaking things if he thinks it will make things better.

I think that more or less covers the discussion.

[flyingMoose]

RPI Futures (a projection of the end-of-season RPI based on Pablo values) thread from Volleytalk has the following. It does not include any projected conference tournament results.

26 Shockers
50 Northern Iowa
58 Southern Illinois
59 Missouri State


At this point last year, half-way through the conference season, the four teams from the Valley that made the NCAAs had the following projected RPI along with their end-of-season RPIs: projected (actual) team

35 (28) Shockers
42 (34) Missouri State
61 (45) Northern Iowa
62 (40) Southern Illinois

So, there is time for the projected RPIs to be dramatically improved upon.