I’m watching the replay now since I couldn’t watch live and reading VT as well, it’s amazing seeing people hate on us because we’re so good. Bring on the haters! Hail to Pitt!
I just read the entire 27 pages of match posts on VolleyTalk. It was overwhelmingly laudatory of Pitt. Yes, some posters said they could see them losing in the tournament to either Nebraska or Wisconsin if those teams play at their very best because they think both have a higher upside than Pitt. But, that’s not a knock on Pitt’s ability.
As far as high school rankings, which another poster mentioned, both Stafford and Babcock were highly ranked players coming out of high school. Both committed to Pitt as juniors. It’s not uncommon for volleyball players to commit early.
I saw both play one time in high school. When Stafford was a junior, the star of her HS team was Ella Rubin, who now plays at Stanford. So Stafford didn’t get the pub her play should have earned. You usually aren’t going to put up huge numbers when you aren’t the #1 option on your team. But, I was told Fisher had been recruiting her since at least 10th grade and she was solid with Pitt. Had she been the star of the team for more than her senior year, she probably would have been ranked higher.
I think the fact that Stafford was not the only focus on her HS team probably helped her make the adjustment better at Pitt, where she has to share the outside kills with Babcock and VVG. She is used to not everything being set to her. To me, she also seems to be improving faster.
Babcock was the focus of her HS team, but again she was not the only one making kills. I remember in the match I watched the coach complained that her only weakness was that she “jumped too high.”
And, I think a lot of college coaches saw her as a MB. Fisher recruited her at an outside hitter and she also committed early. Again, while she wasn’t ranked in the top 4 or 5 players in her class, she was highly ranked. Both of them got invitations to and played for age-class US teams.
Right now, I would take either of them over Harper Murray, who probably was the #1 outside hitter recruit in that class based on expert evaluations. I think both are performing at a higher level and both have higher ceilings. I don’t know this for a fact, but I think Fisher looks for players with very high ceilings because he thinks he can get them to achieve. I don’t know if he thought they would be this dominant at this early stage of their college careers.
