Women’s VB getting beat by Cuse..reading their
- Thread starter pittizit
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Only 3 really good players
Apparently the JUCO recruit played very poorly
Maybe Pitt should have tried to keep Steidl and Steinberg.
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Who would have thought Pitt's first loss of 2020-21, in any sport, would have been women's volleyball?
looked to me after they won the first set they thought it was over and put it on cruise.
Right - I hope there are adjustments or substitution to be made.
The roster seems to be smaller than usual.
Maybe not,but as much as it pains me to say it cuse is better this year.they have a couple players that I wish we had.
If I remember correctly cuse gave us fits late last year too. We pulled it out but it was close and I remember thinking cuse may be good in the future.
Still disappointing though. But again the first matches of a weird season.
It hurts.but we will get better.this is too good a team not to.
Last night they lost but looked confused and battled. Tonight they got down early and were mostly just chasing from behind the rest of the match.
Pitt still has a lot of talent but they seem to have very little chemistry in bringing those players together.
Pitt still has a lot of talent but they seem to have very little chemistry in bringing those players together.
Didn’t get to watch tonight.had live stats on.did they not have announcers or just bad quality overall?
Our reign as a VB power appears to be in trouble. Syracuse was not predicted to finish in the top 5 of the ACC. The replacements for the three front court players we lost were not very good.
It was from the back of the one end of the court and the score was like from a high school production
And to think these schools were to prepare like a year ahead of time (two years now) to produce quality productions for the ACC network.And you get that.wow.
LOL, and Syracuse is supposed to be some elite sports media program school, or some such nonsense judging by that "production."
Appears to be over for this year. Elite teams don't get swept by Syracuse, in straight sets.
Is anyone hurt? Nwokolo?
Would Soboleski and Steibel have helped?
Did we also have someone that could have come back, chose to leave? Perosa?
Can Russ be an option? She is 6-5.
Roster number seems low.
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I didnt watchy any of yesterdays game, but they are starting Nwokolo in the middle from what it looks like, she just doesnt seem to be very effective so far.
Maddie was a setter, so her loss was fine, we have Lexis and Levers there.
The thing is, Lockwood was brought in as the JUCO player of the year, to help offset the loss of Williams and Nika outside, and she has been awful through 2 games. She hit 5/20 yesterday and I dont even want to look up the stats from the first game.
jury is still out on that new libero and Browske.
Maddie was a setter, so her loss was fine, we have Lexis and Levers there.
The thing is, Lockwood was brought in as the JUCO player of the year, to help offset the loss of Williams and Nika outside, and she has been awful through 2 games. She hit 5/20 yesterday and I dont even want to look up the stats from the first game.
jury is still out on that new libero and Browske.
Logically, the time to recruit replacements for the 3 front court players who graduated was after their sophomore seasons. That way, those recruits would have some time to adjust before they were thrust into the lineup.
if you look at the roster, it is small. And, none of the sophomores or redshirt freshmen have really established themselves this season. Lund is not such a dominating player that she can thrive as the only outside hitter; or even one of two. She needed those other options from last year’s team to be effective because she sometimes was unblocked and otherwise single blocked. Ndee was getting double and triple blocked by Syracuse. Lockwood was terrible. The middle blocking was poor.
I’m guessing that one of the problems was that I have read here and elsewhere that HS volleyball players commit very early — in 9th or 10th grade. We really only have been a name on the national scene for two years, so I suspect the recruiting options were limited after those sophomore seasons. He built the team with Canadian, European and under-recruited talent. But, the success rate of that approach obviously is limited and this season appears to be highlighting those limitations.
if you look at the roster, it is small. And, none of the sophomores or redshirt freshmen have really established themselves this season. Lund is not such a dominating player that she can thrive as the only outside hitter; or even one of two. She needed those other options from last year’s team to be effective because she sometimes was unblocked and otherwise single blocked. Ndee was getting double and triple blocked by Syracuse. Lockwood was terrible. The middle blocking was poor.
I’m guessing that one of the problems was that I have read here and elsewhere that HS volleyball players commit very early — in 9th or 10th grade. We really only have been a name on the national scene for two years, so I suspect the recruiting options were limited after those sophomore seasons. He built the team with Canadian, European and under-recruited talent. But, the success rate of that approach obviously is limited and this season appears to be highlighting those limitations.
I'm not sure where these roster criticisms are coming from. VB has a 12 full-scholarship limit and there are 14 girls on the roster. I believe last year there were 19 players including walk-ons. It is obvious that because of the virus, Pitt is limiting the number of non-scholarship players participating, but you're not getting a ton of production out of non-scholarship players anyway.
Browske and Perosa were the presumptive libero options before the transfer, so I don't consider it much of a liability that Browske is taking over. I doubt Perosa would've been any better had she stayed. I actually thought Popovic seemed fine receiving as libero in the first match. Maybe there was another aspect of her game they didn't like, or they just wanted her in the rotation as a defensive player. In the long-term, it is probably a good sign that their starting libero is a sophomore. That has been their least elite position during their stretch of success.
IMO Faki is the one that hasn't really taken much of a step forward.
Thanks for your informative post.
Would Soboleski and Steibel have been factors this season?
How would you describe team chemistry?
I think this was a team that really could've used a scrimmage and some warm up matches. The seniors that graduated last year had played a lot over their careers. One of the bad things about being really talented is that your older players are blocking the opportunities for your younger players. It was a weird development last year that Nika (their most accomplished player) had been replaced by Starks, but it ended up being a smart decision and Starks played really well.
Nwokolo had some good flashes as a freshman last year, so it is probably a good sign that Fisher has enough faith in her to name her a starter, even if she isn't putting up the numbers you'd expect.
As far as overall chemistry, it's probably hard to bring in a brand new libero and another offensive transfer. Fisher still doesn't know what he's going to do with two talented setters. They've used different rotations so far and experimented with both on the floor at the same time. That's just a lot of change from last year, regardless of talent differential, and they've probably had less opportunity to truly train together than in previous years. Levers, especially, is coming back from losing an entire season and wasn't able to go through a normal recovery progression during the lockdown.
I expect they aren't as bad as they looked last weekend, but they might be lucky to be a true top-25 team unless they make a lot of progress. With the NCAA tournament field shrunk for VB this year, they've probably moved themselves to the bubble already unless they can come back and dominate the rest of their schedule. Last year only 4 ACC teams made it and only Pitt was seeded.
ND beat UL and their second match was canceled. GT split their weekend with Miami. It's certainly not impossible that Pitt could still manage to win the ACC depending on what the conference does in the Spring season.
Another weird wildcard for this season is the seniors get an extra year of eligibility. I'd be seriously concerned with what the team would look like in 2021 minus Lund, Ndee, Levers, and Faki. I guess there's a chance that any or all of them could come back again? Even if there are no roster additions/replacements, it is possible that this team could make a lot of progress and be much better next year.
We don't even know if these games will count for the spring season or NCAA tourney, do we?
Why wouldn't they?
The NCAA isn't going to allow the teams that are playing in the fall to play more games than everyone else by playing the regular number of games in the spring as well. That's part of the reason why the ACC only scheduled the minimum number of conference games for the sports that are playing in the fall. So if all the other conferences have a spring season and if the NCAA tournaments happen in those sports schools will not have used up all their allowable games by playing in the fall.
