Louisville Invitational

[1972Shocker]

Count on not being ranked for the rest of the year. Any hopes of an at large, deserved or not, have been dealt a serious blow.

It's still kind of funny to me how thin the line is when you are WSU.

No doubt about the rankings and no doubt that this deals our at-large chance a serious blow. We really have eliminated any margin for error, starting tomorrow vs Louisville, although after today's performance my level of confidence that we can make it happen tomorrow is not very high right now. I'm thinking the MVC Tournament may be a really big key for the Shocks post-season hopes this year, but we'll see how it goes.

I give Mel credit for her post-game comments. She had no excuses and seems determined to provide the leadership needed.

Lambo seemed particularly concerned about our lack of effective attacking today (although I'm not sure we played well in any phase of the game).

Tomorrow will be very interesting. Maybe not so much whether we win or lose but simply whether we can come back and perform at a higher level.

:goshocks: (Still my Shockers!)

[sunshock]

[/quote]Shocks may be missing Lindsey's consistency today, but more than that I think this is the kind of match where Kelly Broussard's graduation is being felt. Kelly would simply not allow the Shocks to perform like this.

I think this is your key to the loss!! Maybe Melissa should re-evaluate some of her comments made yesterday in the Wichita Eagle. There was a reason she did not have Kelly's job!

[SpanglerFan316]

I've got a few thoughts.
1. We miss Kelly a lot. Not (only) her "defense" but her passing of service reception.
2. Lamb said Pitt jammed the middle and we didn't get enough production outside. I think a lot of this is on Hooper. She may be getting worse passes than last year and there may be timing issues because Lindsey isn't playing the left side. However, MEH had a terrible attacking percentage (<0.00) and this makes sense if Pitt was jamming the middle. Emily Stockman should have hit 0.600 or 0.800 with minimal blocking against her but she didn't. Why? Is it poor setting? Will Feekin play this year?
3. Lindsey could put the ball away. The Shocks have not had enough time to adjust to new lineups yet. Emily Adney is a nice surprise but this is only her second match in D1.

So I'm critical of the "littles" and Hooper. Maybe a little critical of Stockman too. It sounded from MK like Hooper had a number of poor passes on SR (and set many of them pretty well.) Chris Lamb was there and I trust his comments. One of the following happened: (i) Hooper did not set our OHs enough and allowed Pitt to benefit from jamming the middle. (ii) Hooper tried to set our OHs but set poorly. (iii) Hooper set well enough but our OHs played poorly (Adney played well, which suggests that this might not be the problem - ES's attack percentage was not that great; was she "off" this match?)

I don't really expect to see Feekin play this year. However I didn't expect Adney to play this year either. Feekin is an "attacking setter" like Hooper and so I'm not sure she would be a solution to our problems. We might need better sets, better distribution and more unselfish play (i.e. fewer second ball attacks) from our setter(s) or our opponents may camp in the middle all season long. In the MVC tourney, didn't MSU camp in the middle, shadow Hooper and beat us?

John Cook's daughter was the PrepVB high school "national setter of the year" last year because of her amazing ability to turn a poor pass into a great set. We may need a setter with this ability this year.

This is only one match. Let's see how Sunday goes. I do expect more losses but a much improved team in a month; Dana should be completely healthy, adjustments to Lindsey's loss should be better, Adney will have a month's more experience and the littles should fix the "systems problem" that Mel mentioned in the interview with Mike K.

I have a "fan concern." Wichita loves a winner (and not so much a loser - WBB.) I expect WSU to go 1-2 this weekend. Will this hurt fan support? Remember how much support the basketball team got in the Creighton game after a 0-6 MVC start? The volleyball team needs outstanding fan support when they play in CKA next week. Pass the word because the Shocks have lots of time to fix the problems, win the Valley and make a deep run in the NCAA tourney.

[shock10]

wake up call

[dregn]

Hope Sub doesn't mind, but I'm not worried. On top of that I'm holding off on any comments about individuals and the team until I get a chance to see them in person. Not even close to being able to question any of the players at this point in time. To me it's very hard to get a feel for how a team is performing and why they are performing in that manner by listening on radio or looking at a box score.

[SubGod22]

Hope Sub doesn't mind, but I'm not worried. On top of that I'm holding off on any comments about individuals and the team until I get a chance to see them in person. Not even close to being able to question any of the players at this point in time. To me it's very hard to get a feel for how a team is performing and why they are performing in that manner by listening on radio or looking at a box score.

I never mind coming from you D. No doubt this is a disappointing result and a bit surprising. I look forward to getting a chance to see the ladies play in person.

[SpanglerFan316]

Hope Sub doesn't mind, but I'm not worried. On top of that I'm holding off on any comments about individuals and the team until I get a chance to see them in person. Not even close to being able to question any of the players at this point in time. To me it's very hard to get a feel for how a team is performing and why they are performing in that manner by listening on radio or looking at a box score.

I agree. However Chris Lamb was there and did offer his comments. I'll trust his comments even if I wasn't there. It looks like Hooper set the OHs sufficiently. ES 33 TA, EA 20 TA, etc. Amanda Backes only had 7 TAs (in 2 sets). Why?

Look at the positives. Sarah McGee was amazing. 4 BS and 4 BA!!! Emily Adney was amazing; 20 attempts (second after Emily Stockton's 33), 8 kills, 1 BA. Everybody can have a bad match. It's still a great team and I have confidence that the Shocks will be good in December.

We might sweep Louisville tomorrow; this was just one match and adjustments might be made today. However Chris didn't sound very happy after the Belmont victory or the Pitt loss.

Look at the box score. http://www.goshockers.com/fls/7500/s...9/09wsu-02.htm
Here are all the players with ATTACK PCT greater than .000.
9 Wadsworth, Kim...... 1| 1 0 2 .500| 0| 0 0| 0| 0| 0 0 0| 0| 1.0
6 Adney, Emily........ 3| 8 4 20 .200| 0| 0 0| 0| 0| 0 1 0| 0| 8.5
21 McGee, Sarah........ 3| 4 2 13 .154| 0| 1 1| 0| 1| 4 4 0| 0| 11.0
2 Stockman, Emily..... 3| 10 5 33 .152| 3| 0 1| 0| 5| 0 2 0| 0| 11.0
15 Backes, Amanda...... 2| 2 1 7 .143| 0| 0 0| 0| 0| 0 0 0| 0| 2.0
7 Tokarz, Stephanie... 2| 2 1 8 .125| 0| 0 0| 0| 0| 0 0 0| 0| 2.0

Those less than .000?
17 Niggemeyer, Katie... 3| 3 4 14 -.071| 1| 0 0| 0| 3| 0 1 0| 0| 3.5
5 Hooper,MaryElizabeth 3| 2 4 13 -.154| 26| 0 0| 0| 5| 0 2 0| 0| 3.0

[SpanglerFan316]

http://www.kansas.com/sports/shockers/story/949513.html Shocker lose first regular-season volleyball match in 2 years
The Shockers received little production from middles Stephanie Tokarz, Katie Niggemeyer and Sarah McGee, who combined for nine kills.

"We misconnected in the middle and we misconnected on the right," Lamb said. "Our usual suspects weren't scoring."

Sarah McGee got 13 attempts. Mary Elizabeth got 13 attempts. Is it a good thing if the 2008 first team All-MVC and 2008 MVC attack percentage leader, Sarah McGee, gets the same number of attempts as the setter? Plus Sarah hit a higher percentage than Emily Stockman in this match. The middles don't (usually) set and don't control the distribution of the ball; I'm not sure why Chris called out the middles. Katie had a bad match. ST didn't play at all in the first game (set).

Do we want our setter taking as many kill attempts as our best MB?


ADDED: In 2008, TAs were
2 Stockman, Emily 116 32-32 423 3.65 149 1173 .234
21 McGee, Sarah 114 32-28 268 2.35 77 589 .324
17 Niggemeyer, Katie 98 30-28 174 1.78 60 452 .252
5 Hooper,MaryElizabeth 116 32-32 149 1.28 38 391 .284
15 Backes, Amanda 51 20-4 93 1.82 37 221 .253
7 Tokarz, Stephanie 54 24-5 53 0.98 22 150 .207
9 Wadsworth, Kim 26 19-0 12 0.46 7 36 .139
(Lindsey had 800 TAs.)

[1972Shocker]

I agree that it is difficult to assess what actually happened in the match by listening to the radio broadcast. However, Mike Kennedy is a good enough play-by-play man to get a feel for a few things.

The one thing that struck me was how often Mike was reporting poor passes, low passes and over-passes by the Shocks and this was not limited to the passing by our littles, although it included them.

How much this contributed to the number of poor sets and/or attacks by MEH is really hard to say.

In any case, we were soundly defeated and more or less were in melt down mode at the beginning and end of Set 3.

As I mentioned before I think we may miss the Killer B more than we thought we would. Not just because of her skills as a defender and a passer but as much, if not more, for the intangibles she brought to the table including her competitiveness, her will to win, her heart and her leadership. Sometimes you don't really know what you had until it's gone.

That said I think we can still be a good team by the end of the year. Maybe this match was just a one-game aberration, although Lambo did not seem to be buying that explanation. Time will tell.

Still, as Spangler pointed out this is not time to abandon the team. They need our support even more when things aren't going so well. If we are going to continue to build this program we need the fans to hang in there and I think they will.

[1972Shocker]

Arizona topped Belmont this afternoon in straight sets 25-20, 25-13 and 25-21.

This evening Belmont took the 1st set from Louisville 25-14 while Louisville came back to tie the match at 1-1 with a 25-18 win in Set 2.

Edit: Louisville takes Set 3 (25-22) and Set 4 (25-18) to hand Belmont its 4th consecutive loss.

[ShockerFever]

Wow..

Not to sound spoiled, but there goes that....

[1972Shocker]

I am very interested to see how the team respnds today against Louisville.

I am cautiously optimistic that they will come back with a much better performance than we against Pitt. I hope that doesn't prove to be just wishful thinking.

The proximity of Lindsey's injury to the start of the season did not give Lambo a whole lot of time to work out his alternatives.

However, we certainly did not seem to get a lot of hard swings at Pitt and it's not because Pitt had overwhelming size. I am a little concerned about our ball handling and passing which has very little to do with Lindsey's absence.

[shocklight]

Did we expect to have a better record than last year?

If so, that is a bit unrealistic, there is not much room for a better record! The win streak that was broken, was going to happen sooner or later. Hopefully, that monkey is off their back now.

I see no reason for panick!

Lambo will get the job done, he always does!

[SpanglerFan316]

The proximity of Lindsey's injury to the start of the season did not give Lambo a whole lot of time to work out his alternatives.

I think this is an huge factor. In a month, we'll be much better in my opinion.

However, we certainly did not seem to get a lot of hard swings at Pitt and it's not because Pitt had overwhelming size. I am a little concerned about our ball handling and passing which has very little to do with Lindsey's absence.

I agree. However we would have won easily with Lindsey playing IMO. There were many times when we had an attack but it didn't hit the floor. Lindsey was good at getting the ball on the floor. Stockman usually is too but not so much yesterday.

I'm still amazed by Sarah McGee's 8 blocks yesterday. Also Emily A. impressed.

[SpanglerFan316]

Did we expect to have a better record than last year?

If so, that is a bit unrealistic, there is not much room for a better record! The win streak that was broken, was going to happen sooner or later. Hopefully, that monkey is off their back now.

I see no reason for panick!

Lambo will get the job done, he always does!

If Chris Lamb said this, I would not be concerned. However, he didn't say "Don't worry." He said, in effect, "I'm worried (& p***ed) and we better get better."