Inside the Limited Numbers Against Pitt

For the first two or three weekends of the volleyball season, previews are written with a mixture of last year’s team and player performances, new player projections and a good dose of speculation and opinion. After a handful of matches are played, game plans and rotations come into focus and speculation takes a backseat. Additionally, since the Pitt match was an exhibition, there was no full box score published. The few stats available for this match were picked up from articles on the team websites and twitter postings.

This coming weekend the Flyers play at the Cardinal Classic in Louisville, KY which is one of the toughest pre-conference tournaments in the country. So here is a good dose of all of the above and an outside-looking-in view of where UD stands in a couple areas to start the season.

First, Pitt entered the match ranked #12. Pitt exited the match as #12. Pitt plays Cleveland State, Cincinnati and South Carolina this weekend – at home. The toughest match will be Cincinnati, so of course, Pitt has scheduled that match as their second match on Friday when Cincinnati has to battle South Carolina first and gets a short turn around to recover and play Pitt at 7 pm. We’ve been there, done that. I expect Pitt to start the season 3-0. On Monday, when voting coaches get their cheat sheets, they will see Pitt is undefeated. Some will know we beat Pitt in exhibition play, but most won’t give it much thought. (But, that W, 3-2 sure looks good on our schedule page and it will be there forever.) Pitt will still be a Top 15 team at this time next week. They are one of the best teams in the country and that won’t change in the rankings because of the talent in their line up. They remain very, very good.

Pitt has all their hitters back from last year, and then some. They are loaded. Last year they finished 6th in the country in hitting percentage at .291. Any team hitting percentage in the .270+ range is very good. Dayton was good last year at .272. We too have talent at the hitting positions, even after graduating Lauren Bruns and Kendyll Brown. We are still loaded and we might be better than last year. We hit .291 against Pitt…better than last year.

Your hitters are also your blockers. Pitt was a very good blocking team last year averaging 2.72 blocks/set for #18 in the country. There were only 4 teams over 3.0 last year. Three just over 3.0 and then Stanford way out ahead of everyone at 3.40 blk/s. UD was #88 at 2.28 per set. This is in the top 30% of Division I, but our goal is a Sweet 16 and only three teams had worse blocking stats than UD that made the second weekend (KY @ 2.06, MI @ 2.02 and Marquette @ 1.90). All three of those are pretty shocking to be honest but it’s not shocking to see Elite Eight teams ranged between 2.40 to 3.40 and averaged 2.77 blocks per set. Both Pitt and Dayton were way below their average from last year in Saturday’s match. (I didn’t see the match.) Sometimes early in the season good blocking teams are close. They get their hands on a lot of balls (block touches) and just need to make a few small adjustments to complete the block. That was the case for the 2010 team which finished the year as a Top 3 blocking team.

It also could have been the talented hitters are hard to block. Great hitter, in a split second after they leave the floor, can make a decision on what shot they are going to execute based on what the defense is doing. They can split the outside blocker and the antenna, curve the ball around the block so it lands down-the-line and inside the line. They have a cut shot to avoid the blockers. They know when they just have to roll the ball over the block because if they don’t, it gets blocked. They know when to tip. They see when the block is late. They see when the block has a seam they can get the ball through. And, they know when the back row is out of position and they can hammer it cross-court. Last Saturday, Dayton averaged 1.4 blk/s and Pitt 1.8. Neither team is going to end the season anywhere near those numbers. But, Dayton faces even more talented hitters this weekend so they will need to block better. It’s a work in progress.

Dayton also had more kills than Pitt at 70 which was an average of 14/set. That would have ranked UD in the Top 30 last year. Considering the 5th set was won at 19 points, Dayton appeared to dictate 15-16 of their points in any set versus scoring points off of errors by Pitt. This offensive stat is pretty good considering who we played. You have to be able to terminate and score to win. It will be especially important this coming weekend when we play Florida because if Florida has a weakness, it’s back row skills. Will they be able to handle our serve and dig and pass our attacks?

The Flyers out-dug Pitt 58 to 53 (11.4 per set). To be one of the top teams nationally in digs you need average more than 18. You don’t want to lead the nation in digs per set. You want to out-dig your opponents each match. If you’re a top digs/set team, you have no block and a ton of balls are getting to your back row. There are some other reasons you might have a high-dig count, but none of them are good as a TEAM. Individually it’s another story. In the first set against Pitt, So L Maura Collins had nine digs. She finished with 16. The last three years Pitt has been playing against our Libero Margo Wolf, who was A10 LOY but graduated. Nine digs in one set just doesn’t happen. Collins had to dig just about everything Pitt sent her way that first set and she handled it. Coaches get stat sheets between sets and it is highly probable instructions to hit away from Collins were given after that first set. She had only 7 digs combined in the last 4 sets.

#10 Florida, who we play this Saturday, has more talented hitters than Pitts. They have a #1, #7, #8, #25, #25, #28, #33, #39, #47 and #58 plus a #24 Setter feeding them the ball. We’ve got to have a big block and a back row able to dig the attacks that get through. The back row appears to be ahead of our block right now, but one match does not make a season. We’ll also have game plans for each of the three teams this weekend. The staff will have studied hitters and setters and passed on tendencies to the team in video sessions. That will help the block.

On the flip side, we graduated our top two hitters in Bruns and Brown. There isn’t a lot of video on R-So OH Jamie Peterson or R-Fr MB Amanda Moore. Neither played in the Louisville match last year. So OH Alli Papesh, Sr RS Sierra Pla, R-Jr MB Olivia Dubay and R-Jr S/RS Brooke Westbeld all started the second half of the season last year and Texas A&M, Florida and Louisville will have video to study on them.