Jam The Gym (UNI) & Halloween Night (Drake)

[1972Shocker]

Coming off of what I thought was a poor performance last Friday against Missouri State which dropped the Shocks into a 1st place tie with Missouri State at 8-2 with UNI and SIU onl one-half game back the Shocks settle into 4 consecutive Friday-Saturday Valley matches to close out the regular season.

UNI (8-3, 17-7) and Drake (4-6, 13-11) are on tap this Friday and Saturday at 7:00 pm.

The Shocks lost to UNI 25-20, 18-25, 23-25 and 22-25 in CedarFalls on October 1st. The previous night the Shocks swept Drake 17, 20 and 18.

How the Shocks fare against UNI, SIU and ILS over the remaining 4 weeks will most likely determine their regulars season position and their NCAA at-large chances. Of course, the simply can not afford to stumble against any of the bottom five teams at all.

Friday is Jam the Gym night with a Buy 1 - Get 1 Free promotion. Plus the 1st 1,000 fans in attendance get a free Shocker volleyball.

The Drake macth on Saturday features Free admission for all fans in costume and there will be prozes for best dressed and the annual kids Halloween costume contest which is always fun.

After the match there will be free Popcorn and a Halloween movie on the videobaord. Not sure this idea will go over very big. My guess it won't. The 3 remaining Friday-Saturday match-ups for the Shocks are as follows:

@ Bradley and @ Loyola
Illinois State and Indiana State at Koch Arena
@ SIU and @ Evansville

[1972Shocker]

Shocker Match Notes

Northern Iowa Match Notes

Drake Match Preview

[flyingMoose]

Thread semi-hijack:

I noticed that we now claim X number of years of Top 15 attendance in our pre-match video when we used to claim Top 10 (I think). That may have to change to Top 20. Currently we are 17th at 2034 with Northern Iowa 16th at 2055. We are the only Valley teams with average attendance in four figures. The big change is in the B1G. They now have seven of the top eight average attendances with only Hawai'i sneaking in at second.

Maybe the Northern Iowa match (I tied the post back to the thread - that was close :) ) will help our number. The 15th attendance is 2057.

[1972Shocker]

Thread semi-hijack:

I noticed that we now claim X number of years of Top 15 attendance in our pre-match video when we used to claim Top 10 (I think). That may have to change to Top 20. Currently we are 17th at 2034 with Northern Iowa 16th at 2055. We are the only Valley teams with average attendance in four figures. The big change is in the B1G. They now have seven of the top eight average attendances with only Hawai'i sneaking in at second.

Maybe the Northern Iowa match (that was close - I tied it back to the thread :) ) will help our number. The 15th attendance is 2057.

I was actually thinking about that the other day. I was thinking that our attendance may be lagging due to so many of our matches being on ESPN3. Hopefully, that produces enough revenue to make up for any damage it might be doing to attendance. It might be doing that for some of the other Valley programs who have never drawn well but I wonder if it does for WSU.

The last 10 years from 2006 through 2015 represent WSU's top 10 attendance averages with 2006 at #10 with an average attendance of 2,083. The Shocks peaked at 3,177 in 2008. 2014 was also a big year at 3,078. However, we had a big drop in 2015 to 2,261 and have dropped another 10% this year. The Valley debuted its Volleyball ESPN3 braodcoasts on September 10, 2015. Coincidence?

The other thing I have never quite figured out is why student attendance at Volleyball matches is so bad. Really next to non-existent. Just has never really caught on with the students despite the success of the program. No reason to expect that to change I guess.

Note that despite being slightly behind Northern Iowa in raw attendance numbers I believe the WSU Volleyball program is probably well ahead of UNI in VB generatesd revenues especially when you inlcude the VB101 dinner. Although I don't have actual numbers to back up that claim it appears to me that in the past few years UNI utilizes heavily discounted ticket promotions to a much greater degree than does WSU.

The silver lining to that I guess is that getting a great seat and view of the match in Koch Arena is a slam dunk, parking is pretty easy as is getting out fo the parking lots after the match.

[1972Shocker]

Off Tight Over Over is baaaack.

Hopefully, it will make a positive differrence this weekend.

[1972Shocker]

Not good so far tonight as Lambo keeps searching and experimenting. Not sure the 6-2 is the answer. Hope he switches to the 5-1 in set 3 and see what happens.

[1972Shocker]

Lambo did switch to the 5-1 in Set 3 and it worked well as the Shocks seemed to have the set welll in hand leading 20-13. But then they collapsed down the stretch losing the set 25-27 as UNI walks away with a sweep.

The Shockers look like a team lacking confidence and in some disarray at this point.

I think the Coaching staff may deserve some credit for that especially in tonight's match. For some reason Lambo and staff thought it was good idea to roll out a 6-2 offense against a very good UNI team with very, very inexperienced Jordan Roberts sharing setting duties with Emily and a an inexperienced and unathletic Alex Koon playing front row rotations on the outside. Alex struggled mightily hitting 0-4-10 =-0.400. I felt bad for Alex that Lambo put her in that position. Apparently, she must have shown him something in practice.

Compounding the problems is that Mikaela 4-6-25 = -0.080 and Tabitha was 8-5-26 = 0.115 plus Tabitha has 3 service reception errors as UNI was definitely targeting her. I think right now neither Mikaela or Tabitha are playing with much confidence.

Hard to say if the outcome would have been different if Lambo had stayed with the 5-1 throughout the match. On occasion I think Lambo overthinks things. This may have been one of those occasions that ended up biting him.

At this point the Shockers simply do not look like an NCAA quality team and perhaps they simply lack the talent to be so. They certainly need to rediscover their mojo and get it going again. Hopefully, they can start getting back on track tomorrow night against Drake.

The Shocks went from playing very clean, low error volleyball with the new lineup to playing very high error volleyball their last two matches.

[flyingMoose]

Northern Iowa 3-0 SHOCKERS
24, 18, 25

[flyingMoose]

Post-game comments:

One of the assistants has been pushing for the 6-2 for awhile and the other assistant finally said, Let's try it. Although Alex has been tearing it up in our gym, she has not had to battle against a defense the caliber of Northern Iowa. She was clearly not ready for tonight. We could not get out of rotations quickly enough when she was our left side. Lambo is anxious to get post-match evaluations from the assistants. (I wonder if they will not try the 6-2 again against Drake to try to build some confidence in it and in Alex. I thought Jordan was fine as the second setter - we just haven't demonstrated we have six hitters.)

He noted we had two clear missed (defensive?) assignments in the late surge by the Panthers. (Conversely, it seems they never miss an assignment.)

[boyshocker]

Good points 72, Lamb seems intent on getting the left side more involved no matter how many sets we lose. Katy , Abbie and Jody should have been the only ones hitting at the end. I agree the coaching staff needs to take some responsibility for this one. This team has seen its confidence sucked out of it and feel for this kids. another thing I wonder about is our recruiting the last few years, there is not much depth.

[flyingMoose]

Other Friday Matches

MISSOURI STATE 3-0 Drake

Loyola 3-1 SOUTHERN ILLINOIS
Wow!! After Loyola lost two at home last weekend.
23, (16), 20, 22

Illinois State 3-0 INDIANA STATE

EVANSVILLE 3-2 Bradley
The Purple Aces cash in their best chance for a conference win this season, winning 23 and 13 in the last two sets.

[flyingMoose]

Shockers 3-0 Drake
23, 21, 15

After struggling in the first two sets, the Shocks forged a healthy lead in the third set that allowed Lambo to play several that previously had limited playing time. Natalie Brisso had two kills including match point.

Lambo pointed out the good play of Gabi. He constantly asks his littles to throw their bodies around (which they were not doing earlier in the conference and caused him to drop playing them at all for awhile), and Gabi did well at that tonight. He also mentioned Tabitha (9-3-19 for .316) and Jodi (9-2-21 for .333). Although Mikaela had nine kills, her line was 9-9-29 for .000, something they need to work on. Earlier in the conference season the Shocker error rate was 9%. Although tonight's rate of 17% is slightly better than the recent past, it is still something that needs to improve. [Earlier in the season, he spoke of a desirable rate of 13-14%.]

[flyingMoose]

Other Saturday Matches

MISSOURI STATE 3-1 Northern Iowa
(19), 19, 21, 22

SOUTHERN ILLINOIS 3-0 Bradley

Loyola 3-2 EVANSVILLE


The top six in the standings are

10-2 Missouri State
9-3 Shockers
9-4 Northern Iowa
9-4 Southern Illinois
8-4 Illinois State
7-6 Loyola

[flyingMoose]

RPIs from 31 October with last week's RPI in parentheses:

35 (32) Shockers
46 (51) Missouri State
47 (53) Northern Iowa
62 (56) Southern Illinois

With Southern Illinois's loss to Loyola, the Valley is down to a Gang of Three for at-large bids. Again, low 40s is the typical number required to get an at-large.

[flyingMoose]

The current winning percentages for the out-of-conference schedules:

64.5 Shockers
54.3 Missouri State
56.7 Northern Iowa
56.7 Southern Illinois

The 64-65% that Lambo thought the Shocker schedule would reach has been achieved.