Volleyball

[CitadelGrad]

Penn State's streak is over, as they were swept by Stanford today.
(I get the feeling that most PSU fans didn't expect the streak to continue very long this year)

Do you have any idea how many All-Americans and All-Conference players Penn State has graduated in the last two years? Fawcett, Glass, Harmotto and Hodge are all with the US national team now. Darcy Dorton (last year's Big Ten Freshman of the Year) is out for the season with a torn ACL and we just brought in nine freshmen. Of course the streak was going to end this year. This is as close to a rebuilding year for Penn State as you'll see. Don't be surprised to see this team in a regional final or the Final Four this year though. Those freshmen are improving fast.

[wkuhillhound]

JayJ79: Your RPI has just went up even more. The results of the WKU Invitational:

Virginia Tech L (2 - 3) 22-25, 25-27, 25-22, 25-20, 8-15 (what a comeback by WKU to force a 5th set!!!)
#27 Missouri W (3 - 1) 25-20, 25-19, 19-25, 25-17
Tennessee Tech W (3 - 1) 25-13, 21-25, 26-24, 25-13
Central Arkansas W (3 - 0) 25-15, 25-20, 25-22

WKU is now (8 - 3) on the season next is the St. Louis Tournament starting on the 17 & 18 as they play Marshall, LIpscomb, and Saint Louis.

[JayJ79]

CG: yes, that's pretty much what I meant with my parenthetical aside.

Congrats, Toppers! Keep it up!

[CatMom]

TXST is up for the AVCA play of the week. They're finalist # 5. Vote if you think it's worth the accolade

http://www.avca.org/awards/play-of-the-week/

[frinq]

Where do you find the NCAA RPI rankings for volleyball?? I keep getting 2009 rankings when I google it.
PSU starts out on conference play tomorrow at Montana and Montana State. Should be telling. Montna was picked with us for first by the coaches, but they've lost a long string of matches so far.

[JayJ79]

Where do you find the NCAA RPI rankings for volleyball?? I keep getting 2009 rankings when I google it.
PSU starts out on conference play tomorrow at Montana and Montana State. Should be telling. Montna was picked with us for first by the coaches, but they've lost a long string of matches so far.

They don't release an RPI until a little later in the season.

[frinq]

Conference play began in the Big Sky this weekend. Portland State and Northern Colorado emerged at the top at 2-0. PSU beat MSU and Montana 3-1 each, while Northern Colorado beat Weber State 3-1 and Idaho State 3-2. UNC and PSU will be battling it out this year, with Idaho State and Sac State close on their heels. Whoever is the winner, they get to go to the NCAAs and play one of the northern Pac-10 teams, Stanford or maybe UW . We share the frustration with Catmom's TXST; they end up facing UT-A.

[HI54UNI]

Went to the UNI VB game Saturday night after the FB game. Haven't been to a college game since I graduated in '94. Fun atmosphere at the UNI game. My kids enjoyed it even more than the FB game.

[clenz]

UNI has been completely dominating all season long pretty much.

I'd like to think we could crack the top 15 this week, but I won't hold my breath.

[frinq]

UNI looks pretty good. Balanced attack, height for blocking. You've done well in pre-season, though modestly so against the hevyweights you played. Could well take the MVC. Re the comment about the kids liking volleyball more, I'm not surprised. Two hours of football can get tedious for the average person, whereas volleyball's very fast and constantly on edge, takes only one to one and a half hours. I follow both, but admit I'm more likely to attend a volleyball game.

[clenz]

UNI looks pretty good. Balanced attack, height for blocking. You've done well in pre-season, though modestly so against the hevyweights you played. Could well take the MVC. Re the comment about the kids liking volleyball more, I'm not surprised. Two hours of football can get tedious for the average person, whereas volleyball's very fast and constantly on edge, takes only one to one and a half hours. I follow both, but admit I'm more likely to attend a volleyball game.

We've won 23 straight conference matches and beaten a top 10 Minnesota team. The loss to ISU came just days after playing a couple 5 game matches in as many days.

[JayJ79]

We've won 23 straight conference matches and beaten a top 10 Minnesota team. The loss to ISU came just days after playing a couple 5 game matches in as many days.

THREE 5-gamers in 3 days, 4 days prior to the Iowa State match. All on the road. (and coincidentally, the team left directly from Ames to travel to Kansas for their next tournament).

Regardless, ISU is a good team. They likely would have beat UNI regardless of the scheduling.

And the Panthers move up to #16 in the coaches poll this week.

[JayJ79]

Went to the UNI VB game Saturday night after the FB game. Haven't been to a college game since I graduated in '94. Fun atmosphere at the UNI game. My kids enjoyed it even more than the FB game.

awesome! glad to hear it. It's definitely a fun team to watch. Hope y'all are able to make it to more of them!

[frinq]

Hmmm. Dayton? Don't get me wrong, UNI's a very good team. And you very likely will win the MVC. But we ARE playing in a different league, no matter that we're all lumped together in Division I for volleyball. The challenge is to break through the top at the NCAAs, and it ain't easy. Pac-10, Big 10 etc. still dominate. You're win against Minnesota is terrific - congrats!

[frinq]

An obvious correlation - I checked out the rosters of Stanford and Penn State and surprise surprise, they have VERY top heavy teams. Looks like they've swept all the states for 6'4''-6'6" recruits. They double the blocks of all the teams they play. A solid wall. No wonder they're #1-#2. We FCS teams can win our conferences, but we have only a slim chance of going far in the NCAAs. So far UNI's our best bet - but I wonder how far they've gotten in the past in post-season?

[JayJ79]

An obvious correlation - I checked out the rosters of Stanford and Penn State and surprise surprise, they have VERY top heavy teams. Looks like they've swept all the states for 6'4''-6'6" recruits. They double the blocks of all the teams they play. A solid wall. No wonder they're #1-#2. We FCS teams can win our conferences, but we have only a slim chance of going far in the NCAAs. So far UNI's our best bet - but I wonder how far they've gotten in the past in post-season?

I don't see many top-heavy volleyball players. But I suppose part of that is the effect of good sturdy sports bras......
oh wait, not that kind of top-heavy.


As far as UNI in the post-season, they've made the "Sweet-Sixteen" (i.e. won their first two matches) 3 times (1999, 2001, 2002)

[clenz]

Also made the second round last season

[JayJ79]

Also made the second round last season

second round in '94, '95, '00, '03, '06, '09 (as well as the 3 Sweet 16 years, obviously)

[frinq]

The grind of conference play continues. Portland State took another two matches this weekend, sweeping Weber State 3-0 and Idaho State 3-0. That puts us in first in the Big Sky, 4-0. We'll see how long that lasts. Our main setter went down in the second set last night, don't know how long she'll be out. Sacramento State comes up next week, along with non-conference Seattle U.. Then straight conference, home and away. UNI's doing fine, I presume?

[JayJ79]

UNI's doing fine, I presume?

4-0 as well, after having swept the preseason #2 and #3 picks (at home) during the first weekend, and then beating the #4 and #5 picks (3-1 each) on the road this weekend. Sounds like our setter tweaked an ankle a bit midway through Friday's match, but she finished that match and played all of Saturday's match. So hopefully it wasn't anything too bad.

[frinq]

You got me looking for the pre-season coaches poll of the Big Sky. They had us tied with Montana for first, followed by Eastern Washington, with Northern Colorado in 4th. Weber State and Montana State were last, in 8th and 9th. Well, we started on the road, sweeping Montana (#1) and beating MSU 3-1(#9). Then we came home to sweep Weber State (#8) and Idaho State (#5). As far as present standings go, we're in first, followed by Northern Colorado then Northern Arizona (#7) and Montana. Eastern Washington and MSU are in 5th and 6th place. The coaches poll looks significantly off at this point. Of course, it's a quarter of the way through Conference play and lots of things can happen.

[wkuhillhound]

WKU is getting national recognition by being ranked 39th in the AVCA poll, with MTSU just ahead in being the only Sun Belt teams. That win over Missouri was huge!! WKU is 13 - 4, 2 - 0 in the Sun Belt!! Lets go Tops!!! The rough early season schedule is paying huge dividends.

[jjj3rd]

UNC took down the Montana's this week to move to 15-4 overall, and 6-0 in BSC action. The Bears swept the Bobcats 3-0, and beat the Grizzlies tonight 3-1, in psuedo dominating fashion, 25-20, 23-25, 25-15, 25-11.

[frinq]

Montana lost to UNC in Greeley. When Montana plays UNC at home it may be a different story. Right now UNC's in first unbeaten, followed by Portland State with one loss, followed by Sac State with 2 losses. It's early days yet in the Big Sky. It'll probably come down to UNC and Portland State.

[JayJ79]

UNI won both their matches this past week (non-conf match against South Dakota State on Wed., and a conference match against travel partner, Bradley, on Fri.), stretching their overall match win streak to 11, and their conference win streak to 27 matches.

The Panthers remain at #14 in the AVCA Coaches Poll.