[BostonCard]

At the beginning, ESPN highlighted the liberos of each team and promised to give a "dig of the night" (which I don't believe they delivered on).  
I found it odd that they chose that statistic to look at.   Indeed, it is the worst of the major stats for the two teams, when looked at individually or as a team.

Digs may not be one of our better stats, and I can't speak to what the broadcasters did or did not include in terms of stats (I wasn't really paying much attention to the broadcasters, but more the match itself last night), but Morgan Hentz is a pretty incredible libero. The amount of space that she can cover, freeing up additional players to cover the other parts of the court/set up the block, is in my opinion, one of the keys to why our defense is so good and dominant when it gets rolling.

As a Steelers fan, it was like when Troy Polamalu in his prime played free safety (and covered so much ground on the backend of the defense), freeing up linebackers and other DB's for blitzes, or enabling double teams of receivers.

Also, digs per set is a stat that can be deceiving depending on how many chances there are for a dig.  If you have a pretty dominant offense that can put things away with ease, there won’t be a lot of long rallies that offer up an opportunity to dig.  Likewise, if the blocking game is solid, lots of attempts will never make it very far.  The best metric is probably opposing hitting percentage, which takes into account blocks and digs, and is not sensitive to the number of attempts the other team puts up.

BC

[BostonCard]

At the beginning, ESPN highlighted the liberos of each team and promised to give a "dig of the night" (which I don't believe they delivered on).  
I found it odd that they chose that statistic to look at.   Indeed, it is the worst of the major stats for the two teams, when looked at individually or as a team.

Digs may not be one of our better stats, and I can't speak to what the broadcasters did or did not include in terms of stats (I wasn't really paying much attention to the broadcasters, but more the match itself last night), but Morgan Hentz is a pretty incredible libero. The amount of space that she can cover, freeing up additional players to cover the other parts of the court/set up the block, is in my opinion, one of the keys to why our defense is so good and dominant when it gets rolling.

As a Steelers fan, it was like when Troy Polamalu in his prime played free safety (and covered so much ground on the backend of the defense), freeing up linebackers and other DB's for blitzes, or enabling double teams of receivers.

Also, digs per set is a stat that can be deceiving depending on how many chances there are for a dig.  If you have a pretty dominant offense that can put things away with ease, there won’t be a lot of long rallies that offer up an opportunity to dig.  Likewise, if the blocking game is solid, lots of attempts will never make it very far.  The best metric is probably opposing hitting percentage, which takes into account blocks and digs, and is not sensitive to the number of attempts the other team puts up.

BC