The Flyers’ brought their own hurricane force early to Fort Meyers last weekend, collecting three wins to finish out-of-conference play with an impressive 10-1 record. Now they head into A10 play looking to repeat an undefeated conference season. Several UDPride members have asked me if I thought this year’s team is better than last year’s, the last one being jack72 after the team returned from Florida. Having only seen five of the 11 matches this year (all streaming), I personally think we are better in certain areas but not up to speed in others.

The experts here are the coaching staff who get to break down film every match and grade out players. So over the next couple weeks I’ll ask them about certain areas of the game and get their feedback on the topic. But first we should look at how competitive this year’s OOC schedule actually ended up because it affects performance and play. Listed in order of Strength of Schedule + Team + Record + RPI as of Thursday evening, compliments of figgiestat.

3 (SOS) – Marquette @ 4-5 and 37 RPI

14 – UNI @ 5-7 and 69 RPI

19 – USF @ 4-7 and 108 RPI (x2 matches with UD)

21 – ILL @ 8-2 and 19 RPI

35 – B Green @ 5-6 and 97 RPI

38 – FL Intl @ 2-11 and 202 RPI

47 – UMBC @ 1-10 and 233 RPI

108 – FGCU @ 9-3 and 49 RPI

151 – WKU @ 7-6 and 126 RPI

162 – UD @ 10-1 and 26 RPI

196 – WSU @ 8-3 and 89 RPI

What the heck? Our SOS is not what I thought it would be. #162 – are you kidding? There are 346 DI teams this season. So we barely made the top half in tough scheduling and our conference does us no favors in this area. I couldn’t believe it. So I dug a little deeper. The real expert on this is figgie123, so he can chime in here if I’m not analyzing everything correctly, but it looks to me like we are actually sitting in pretty good shape. I anticipate if we take care of our win-loss performance within the conference, our OOC teams are going to be the gifts that keep on giving. Christmas can come early.

I expect ILL’s RPI to drop but hoping they stay in the Top 25 which would be a huge plus since we beat them. They were picked to finish 11th out of now 18 teams in the B10. They might be a little better than that. Top 50 team is probably a lock assuming no injuries. Top 25, a true gift.

USF was picked 5th out of seven teams in the East Division of the AAC. They are way better than that. SOS is sitting at 19. RPI is sitting at 108. Record is at 4-7. That is impacting their RPI because it’s a low winning percentage. I believe they will win a bunch of conference games. They already knocked off #10 Florida on the road. They were in all seven sets we played them. South Florida is playing well. They will be the surprise of the AAC this year.

Everyone else on our OOC schedule was picked either 1st or 2nd in their conference pre-season polls. Only three of the other eight teams have winning records right now – because for the most part they had very tough schedules in pre-conference. Their RPIs are being heavily dragged down by losing records. Even UMBC who is 1-10 and has an RPI of 233, was picked to win the AmEast Conference. When all these teams start piling up conference wins, their RPIs are going to go up. And here is the icing on the cake, eight of our OOC matches are with teams that currently have SOSs from 3 to 47. They played a bunch of really good teams who should also start piling up wins. Your opponent’s opponents’ records also factor into your RPI math.  Here is what Assistant Coach Timothy Balice had to say.

“From a results perspective going 10-1 is obviously a good thing. We were disappointed with our performance against Marquette as well as a few other matches where we just did not put together a full, clean, and consistent outing from both sides of the ball (offense and defense),” he said. “Marquette played lights out and no doubt was a more complete team on that day which also gives us a good amount of information on things to (work on to) get better.

“In regard to the toughness of competition it is always tough to gauge what teams will look like eight months in advance.  With that said, hindsight is 20/20 and we could have scheduled one or two more elite programs (top 5-10) but it is difficult to get those teams to come to Frericks sometimes as well as line up the right conditions at a neutral site.  All in all, this was a well-constructed schedule given the information we had at the time.”

I also wanted to know, of the 10 OOC teams, how do they stack up as NCAA teams and more specifically, how many do the coaches feel are 2nd Round caliber, since as a program we are looking to win a 2nd round match.

“Historically, seven of our 10 non-conference opponents are NCAA tournament teams,” he explained. “All but FIU, USF and BGSU – and BGSU was in NCAA tournament two out of the last four years. Of all of our opponents I’d say four or five of these teams have a shot at being a 2nd round caliber team this season.”

So I’m confident we have played a very tough OOC schedule, which directly impacts performance and statistics. One of the areas I think we have not performed as well as last season is from the service line. We only get two stats regarding serving. Aces and Service Errors. From an eye-test, I thought we were behind last year in both. I was very surprised to find we are actually right where we finished last season on service errors per set. Both teams average 2.1 SE/S. I would expect this year’s team to improve that stat as they play out the A10. At 2.1, that’s probably a little higher than you want to see, but if the question is how are we performing in this part of the game versus last year? It’s currently even.

On Aces per Set, we are behind last year. Here is what Balice shared about the goals in this area and how things are stacking up based on his opinion of the competition so far this season.

“We would love to shoot for two aces to one error for the team, which is a lofty goal. The level of competition is slightly better than last year” the coach pointed out.  “I’d also say there has been a drop in a few key servers relative to last year. Taylor Russell has not had as many opportunities from the endline early as she did last year. Gaby Arroyo and Lexie are producing less aces relative to last year at this time. With that said, both of those two are still doing a solid job of getting opponents out of system which is not reflected in box score stats.”

So aces are down, but we are still causing a lot of problems for our opponents with aggressive serves. This is an area the team can focus on improving during conference play.

The second area of the game I asked Coach Balice about was the passing and dig skills from the backrow players who all have another year of experience and how it’s contributing to the success we are seeing from all of our hitters.

“Miller is an extremely athletic and talented setter but when our passing is elite we can really showcase all of the weapons in our offense,” he shared. “We returned a lot of our primary passers from last year and they have put in a ton of work to be more consistent and get Miller good passes.

“Every opponent is a new opportunity to sharpen as a team defensively. As we move into conference play we hope to continue to build on what we learned from our opponents this preseason after facing some hard hitting and aggressive serving teams, and continue to sharpen our ability to attack and terminate after we dig.”

Rhode Island is up first on the conference slate with two matches this weekend at Frericks. They have a new head coach and in a word they are…young. Of the eight players who have played the most sets for them, they have a Senior DS, a Junior Setter and OPP, three Sophomore hitters (MB, MB, OH) and it looks like their Libero is a Freshman as well as another MB. Their entire roster has played a lot of sets, which tells you they are still looking for the right rotation. I would expect to see some of our backup players see action in both matches, specifically OH Kaitlyn McNeel and back up setter Ava Larkin who we will need if Miller goes down. Rumor has it Miller is not allowed to cross 4-lanes of traffic or leave her house except to go to class. We’ve got to keep Miller healthy and we’ve got to get Ava playing experience.

All that said, we should sweep both URI matches. It’s a good opportunity for UD to work on aggressive serving. We have played much tougher competition, so we have to use the conference matches to improve specific skills and stay strong mentally. That’s the challenge starting on Friday. First serve is at 7 pm. Make it an aggressive one, or better yet…an ace.