Elsewhere Around American Conference Volleyball

[shockersigep921]

72, where/how do you get your scores?

[1972Shocker]

72, where/how do you get your scores?

From the American Conference website using either the Conference Scoreboard or the Volleyball Schedule.

[WuDrWu]

It really should be an 8-11 win day for the conference. Lots of road apples on the schedule.

UCONN 3-0 over Grand Canyon 13 20 22

Memphis 3-1 over UT-Martin (23) 21 23 19 (not sure I buy that result completely)

Can't go 12-0 if you don't win the first 2.

UCF 3 Virginia 0 19 14 18

3-0

[WuDrWu]

And the good times comes to an end.

Wyoming 3 Tulsa 0 20 21 20 (that's a bad loss - Wyoming is not good at all)

Tulane 3 Alabama State 0 19 22 22

4-1

LSU 3 Houston 0 24 13 19

4-2

Nine wins is the max now.


South Florida 3 -1 Presbyterian College (19) 18 16 19

Arkansas 3-2 SMU 17 (23) (21) 22 13 I thought SMU could win this match. Down 10-11 in the 5th, the Razorbacks ran off 5 of the last 7 including 4 straight kills from redshirt senior All American (and former Texas Longhorn) Victoria Pliar.

For the match, Pilar was 31-9-62 .355 1 ace 4 blocks and 10 digs. Lest you think that was a one off, here are her numbers for the season, prior to today.

253-68-524 .353 6.32 kills/set 114 digs 2.86 (only 20 fewer than their libero) 272.5 points and more than 6 kills per set. By comparison, Tabitha Brown, who is having a tremendous and dominant season so far, has 160.5 points and is averaging 4.46 ksp

[WuDrWu]

USF 3-0 Jacksonville 18 17 21

Central Arkansas 3-2 Tulsa 19 (17) 14 (22) 11 Central Arkansas moves to 10-1 but this was their best win. Their only loss was to Central Florida.

6-4 on the day.


Michigan 3-0 Cincinnati 16 21 18 Really feel bad for the Bearcats losing their AA.

Tulane 3-0 North Florida 24 21 23

8-4 on the day. Tough losses by Tulsa and SMU prevent it from being a solid day.

[1972Shocker]

8-4 on the day. Tough losses by Tulsa and SMU prevent it from being a solid day.

No real movement in RPI benefit today. AAC still ranked 14th in RPI. The MVC moves up to 10th.

http://realtimerpi.com/college_volleyball/rpi_conf_Women.html

[WuDrWu]

Let me hijack the conference for a bit and recap our non con opponents as were almost into conference season:

Lipscomb is 6-6 against a very challenging schedule. They will win a ton of matches in conference. Best wins #24 Arizona, Missouri State, ETSU & Tennessee. Losses to WSU, #20 Ohio State, Texas A&M, #3 Florida, #6 Wisconsin & RV Western Kentucky.

East Tennessee State is 4-7 and a little disappointing. They should still do well in conference.

Belmont is 5-6 with another challenging schedule. No great wins and losses to WSU, Kansas, Purdue, Creighton and Western Kentucky.

IUPUI is 4-9 with no quality wins. Notable losses to Cal Poly, WSU, Dayton. They will likely be a drag on the RPI.

Marquette is 6-5 and all 5 losses are to ranked teams. WSU, San Diego, UCLA, Wisconsin and Kentucky. Win over Hawaii. They should do well behind Creighton in the Big East. One of the better non POW6R teams this season.

Miami is 8-5 and should do well in the MAC. Losses to WSU, Purdue, Marquette, Western Kentucky and Dayton. Wins over South Carolina, Xavier, SIU and Loyola.

Duquesne 5-9 not much to like in the win column including that 3-2 nailbiter over Evansville.

Oregon is ranked #11 and is 7-1 it's lone loss a 1-3 decision to Texas. Wins over Cal Poly, Nebraska, WSU, Marymount. They will compete for a top half or better PAC12 finish.

Cal Poly is 10-2 with losses to only #8 Washington and #11 Oregon. Clearly a match WSU could have, if not should have won. They should win the BigWest.

Creighton is 7-4 now with losses to WSU, #19 Iowa State, #18 USC and #17 Purdue. They also have quality wins against UNI, #3 Washington, #13 Kentucky, #7 Kansas, with both UW and KU on the road. The length of time they are without AA Lydia Demke will play a huge factor in their continued success. Without her, they could lose the BigEast. With her they probably won't lose again until the NCAAs.

Iowa State is 8-1. Wins over an injured Creighton team today and I guess Iowa and Dayton. Loss to UNI. We need to beat them tomorrow and I think our best beats their best.

To date, that makes our combined non con 70-55 I think. .560 and there should be a lot of wins forthcoming for at least 8 of those teams.

[1972Shocker]

Very nice summary @WuDrWu. However, while I don't have any trouble using the "POW6R" thing generally I am a bit uncomfortable using that when discussing Volleyball, especially this year. I certainly don't think I would put it in caps.

Quite frankly the AAC has been unimpressive in volleyball in the non-conference. They are currently 13th in the RPI against a SOS that is ranked 17th among conferences having just moved past the Big Sky after Saturday's late matches.

What would those numbers be without Wichita State? At this point I would have to say that Lambo has taken one for the team. That said I am very hopeful that this year will be the nadir for AAC volleyball but the Shocks themselves will have some major retooling facing them next year.

I know Cincy was blown up by Jordan Thompson's injury but surely that only accounts for a small part of the drop from #6 to #13 in one year especially when you take into account the offsetting benefit of adding a good Shocker team to the mix. Perhaps the AAC graduated a bunch of talent from last year and they are in the retooling phase as well as a conference. Last year the AAC had 7 top 100 teams.

Edit: I may have discovered a major flaw in the RealTimeRPI.com ratings. They have the Shockers at #19 in the RPI having moved up 15 spots with the win over Creighton. However, when you drill down to the conference details they still have the Shocks in the MVC not in the AAC.

[WuDrWu]

I may have discovered a major flaw in the RealTimeRPI.com ratings. They have the Shockers at #19 in the RPI having moved up 15 spots with the win over Creighton. However, when you drill down to the conference details they still have the Shocks in the MVC not in the AAC.

Interesting, I searched further for a different RPI site and found herosports.com and they have the same problem, although perhaps they are just stealing the info from realtimerpi.com, I just don't know.

Also, realtime has UCONN at 351 with no record or rating. They are 7-5 and while yes they lost to Bradley 3-0 and clearly aren't that strong, they aren't 351. And we aren't in the Valley.

Edit: I see herosports has UCONN at 143 or fifth in the AAC.

[UCONN_Husky]

Looks to me like UCONN was swept by Villanova putting the Huskies at 5-3 on the season.

You're correct. UCONN website reversed the results then corrected it. :(

[UCONN_Husky]

Interesting, I searched further for a different RPI site and found herosports.com and they have the same problem, although perhaps they are just stealing the info from realtimerpi.com, I just don't know.

Also, realtime has UCONN at 351 with no record or rating. They are 7-5 and while yes they lost to Bradley 3-0 and clearly aren't that strong, they aren't 351. And we aren't in the Valley.

Edit: I see herosports has UCONN at 143 or fifth in the AAC.

Someone at RealTime has it out for us! :p

[1972Shocker]

Also, realtime has UCONN at 351 with no record or rating. Edit: I see herosports has UCONN at 143 or fifth in the AAC.

I caught that no rating for UConn. Of course, RealTime also has Valpo still in the Horizon.

So the Valley ratings are overstated and the AAC ratings are understated and they totally exclude UConn.

So taking all these issues with the RealTimeRPI.com numbers (which brings is pretty sloppy work) into consideration it looks to me like the AAC is really about 10th in the conference RPI rankings and the Valley is probably about 15th.

But the RealTimeRPI.com sloppiness probably puts that in the unreliable category. Perhaps they will clean that up after the first NCAA official RPI's come out on October 1st.

This at least makes me feel a bit better about where the AAC is in Volleyball and Lambo maybe hasn't taken one for the team after all. although the American is down some this year. But now Jordon Thompson's injury does loom significant in the drop from 6th last year to 10th this year.

[WuDrWu]

Not to get too far off course, but clicking around at various conferences I noticed the CAA has 2 undefeated teams going into conference play. Towson is 13-0 and James Madison is 9-0 (having lost their best tourney this weekend in Florida). Towson was only picked 4th in the CAA. I doubt either is strong enough to remain unscathed through conference play.

Florida and Miami also remain undefeated as do several Big10 teams, including Maryland who was 9-0 going into their own tourney this weekend but faced USC, Oklahoma and Washington. But they swept Southern Cal and OU before suffering their first loss against Washington last night.

[1972Shocker]

I took a look at last year's AAC All-Conference team to get a feel for how much talent graduated.

4 of 12 members of the First Team were seniors. Not bad. 5 of 7 second teamers were seniors. Overall 9 of the leagues 19 top players were seniors. Not bad especially in a sport like volleyball where older is better (at least that is what Lambo preaches).

However, there have been 2 key injuries to returning First Teamers. Most prominently, of course, being the loss of AAC Player of the Year and All-American Jordan Thompson of Cincy. Also Katie Hegarty, a 6-2 RSr RSH for SMU, has not played since the 3rd game of the season due to injury. Not sure if she is out for the season or not.

Thompson's loss has had a huge impact Cincy although Cincy has 2 other First Team members back. SMU had 2 First Teamers and 2 Second Teamers last year. With Hegarty's injury they only have 1 of the Second Teamers back this year. So SMU is down 2 First Teamers and a Second Teamer from last year.

[flyingMoose]

Rich Kern publishes the latest Pablo ratings (calculated by someone else) every Monday. They are not RPI - they don't get you in the Tournament - but they are typically a better predictor of results than RPI. They are useful.

Based on the average Pablo rating of the teams in a conference, I can tell us where the AAC stands tomorrow.