[ColoradoTree]

Digesting the weekend now, and here are some overall thoughts:

1. Caroline Lampl, my goodness. She's been a bit overshadowed by Lord the last couple of years after playing a line above Lord their freshman year. And Lord rightly gets the glory for clinching the national championship last year. But she wouldn't have been in a position to clinch if Lampl hadn't dominated Vanderbilt's Christina Rosca (currently #13 in the country, then #44). Wiping the floor with Ayan Broomfield and then clinching with a third-set tiebreaker is a heck of a weekend. 

2. Lord's weekend wasn't too shabby, either, staying in control of both matches, both against ranked opponents. Her ranking will see a nice little boost. 

3. After a disappointing loss to Hart, I was really pumped to see Gordon respond by controlling her match against Salma Ewing. Ewing is a big time talent, and while you're going to have hiccups against bad matchups, it's nice to see Gordon translate her immense talent and sense for the game into big-time wins.

4. Arbuthnott's clincher against UCLA was vintage Arbuthnott, of course. Now that the USC match is in the books, I hope whatever held her out was nothing serious. We've got a couple of tough matches this weekend where we'll need to be at full strength.

5. Higuchi sure had a rough draw this weekend, facing two super tall big-hitting freshmen (UCLA's Johnson is 5'10", USC's Willson is 5'11"). We know that's her kryptonite, so I'm proud that she found a way to get a win against Johnson, and I'm relieved we had just enough elsewhere against USC to get over the top. (I wonder if we would've been better off taking Higuchi out of the lineup once Arbuthnott couldn't go, putting Madurawe at 5 and Choy at 6, since Madurawe has more of a powerful game than Higuchi does. Madurawe had a nice win over UCLA's Altick earlier this year at the Freeman Memorial Championships, so putting her at 5 against UCLA couldn't really have hurt us, either.)

6. We knew UCLA would be tough. And while I figured USC would be much better than last year, my goodness, I didn't expect them to be that much better. The signs have been there, of course--USC knocking off UCLA earlier this year, USC beating South Carolina--but I thought it would be another year before USC was truly in the mix for the Pac-12 title again. Well, they're here now. I'm just glad we survived our hardest road trip of the conference season (and thank goodness we get USC and UCLA at home next year). 

7. We get Washington and WSU at home this weekend, and we don't yet know how good UW is. They kept it rolling this weekend, beating both Arizona schools, but their undefeated conference record is a little deceiving since they haven't yet played us, Cal, UCLA, or USC. I'll be really interested to see how the rest of the conference standings shake out over the next couple of weeks. UW and WSU were legitimately tough wins last year, and I'm glad we get them at home this year. (WSU, for its part, defeated Arizona easily but got blanked by ASU.)

8. Other results around the country were mostly good for us. Texas beat both #30 Oklahoma and #9 Oklahoma State on the road, so they'll be knocking on the door of the Top 5 in tomorrow's updated rankings. Vanderbilt toughed out a 4-3 win on the road against #22 Kentucky. The win over LSU will continue to lose luster, though, as LSU dropped a tough match at home to Florida, 4-3, before getting swept by South Carolina. (South Carolina continues to be outstanding, beating both LSU and #12 Texas A&M on the road. That's a nice boost for USC and UCLA, at least, since both teams beat South Carolina, and in turn keeps our wins over UCLA and USC looking nice and shiny.) 

9. Our best eight wins are now: #5 Vanderbilt, #6 Texas, #11 UCLA (away), #16 USC (away), #23 LSU, #35 Washington State, #38 Princeton, and #50 Arizona State. FYI, with the 10% bonus for road wins, beating UCLA and USC is like beating the #8 and #12 teams at home, respectively. The rankings go to counting the best 9 wins next week, but we'll hopefully be able to add another Top 15 win in Washington to the list.

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Pac-12 Standings:

T1. #13 Washington (15-1, 5-0)
T1. #7 Stanford (14-1, 5-0)
T3. #11 UCLA (12-4, 4-1)
T3. #16 USC (13-3, 4-1)
T5. #15 Cal (9-5, 3-2)
T5. Colorado (10-8, 3-2)
7. #47 Utah (11-5, 2-3)*
8. #35 Washington State (17-5, 2-3)
9. #50 Arizona State (9-9, 3-5)
10.  Arizona (9-10, 1-7)
11. Oregon (6-13, 0-8)

* Utah is 7th over WSU because of head-to-head record. 

This weekend, the Washington schools visit the Bay Area, the L.A. schools host the mountain schools, the Arizona schools both host #43 Denver, and Oregon is (thankfully, I assume) idle. Oregon continues to have just 5 healthy players, and Sangwan is still not listed on the roster. I'm curious as to what the story is there. 

After this weekend, we have a mountain road trip to play CU and Utah, and the week after that, we head to Berkeley for the regular-season finale. But there should be a lot of separation after this weekend.

[ColoradoTree]

Digesting the weekend now, and here are some overall thoughts:

1. Caroline Lampl, my goodness. She's been a bit overshadowed by Lord the last couple of years after playing a line above Lord their freshman year. And Lord rightly gets the glory for clinching the national championship last year. But she wouldn't have been in a position to clinch if Lampl hadn't dominated Vanderbilt's Christina Rosca (currently #13 in the country, then #44). Wiping the floor with Ayan Broomfield and then clinching with a third-set tiebreaker is a heck of a weekend. 

2. Lord's weekend wasn't too shabby, either, staying in control of both matches, both against ranked opponents. Her ranking will see a nice little boost. 

3. After a disappointing loss to Hart, I was really pumped to see Gordon respond by controlling her match against Salma Ewing. Ewing is a big time talent, and while you're going to have hiccups against bad matchups, it's nice to see Gordon translate her immense talent and sense for the game into big-time wins.

4. Arbuthnott's clincher against UCLA was vintage Arbuthnott, of course. Now that the USC match is in the books, I hope whatever held her out was nothing serious. We've got a couple of tough matches this weekend where we'll need to be at full strength.

5. Higuchi sure had a rough draw this weekend, facing two super tall big-hitting freshmen (UCLA's Johnson is 5'10", USC's Willson is 5'11"). We know that's her kryptonite, so I'm proud that she found a way to get a win against Johnson, and I'm relieved we had just enough elsewhere against USC to get over the top. (I wonder if we would've been better off taking Higuchi out of the lineup once Arbuthnott couldn't go, putting Madurawe at 5 and Choy at 6, since Madurawe has more of a powerful game than Higuchi does. Madurawe had a nice win over UCLA's Altick earlier this year at the Freeman Memorial Championships, so putting her at 5 against UCLA couldn't really have hurt us, either.)

6. We knew UCLA would be tough. And while I figured USC would be much better than last year, my goodness, I didn't expect them to be that much better. The signs have been there, of course--USC knocking off UCLA earlier this year, USC beating South Carolina--but I thought it would be another year before USC was truly in the mix for the Pac-12 title again. Well, they're here now. I'm just glad we survived our hardest road trip of the conference season (and thank goodness we get USC and UCLA at home next year). 

7. We get Washington and WSU at home this weekend, and we don't yet know how good UW is. They kept it rolling this weekend, beating both Arizona schools, but their undefeated conference record is a little deceiving since they haven't yet played us, Cal, UCLA, or USC. I'll be really interested to see how the rest of the conference standings shake out over the next couple of weeks. UW and WSU were legitimately tough wins last year, and I'm glad we get them at home this year. (WSU, for its part, defeated Arizona easily but got blanked by ASU.)

8. Other results around the country were mostly good for us. Texas beat both #30 Oklahoma and #9 Oklahoma State on the road, so they'll be knocking on the door of the Top 5 in tomorrow's updated rankings. Vanderbilt toughed out a 4-3 win on the road against #22 Kentucky. The win over LSU will continue to lose luster, though, as LSU dropped a tough match at home to Florida, 4-3, before getting swept by South Carolina. (South Carolina continues to be outstanding, beating both LSU and #12 Texas A&M on the road. That's a nice boost for USC and UCLA, at least, since both teams beat South Carolina, and in turn keeps our wins over UCLA and USC looking nice and shiny.) 

9. Our best eight wins are now: #5 Vanderbilt, #6 Texas, #11 UCLA (away), #16 USC (away), #23 LSU, #35 Washington State, #38 Princeton, and #50 Arizona State. FYI, with the 10% bonus for road wins, beating UCLA and USC is like beating the #8 and #12 teams at home, respectively. The rankings go to counting the best 9 wins next week, but we'll hopefully be able to add another Top 15 win in Washington to the list.

---

Pac-12 Standings:

T1. #13 Washington (15-1, 5-0)
T1. #7 Stanford (14-1, 5-0)
T3. #11 UCLA (12-4, 4-1)
T3. #16 USC (13-3, 4-1)
T5. #15 Cal (9-5, 3-2)
T5. Colorado (10-8, 3-2)
7. #47 Utah (11-5, 2-3)*
8. #35 Washington State (17-5, 2-3)
9. #50 Arizona State (9-9, 3-5)
10.  Arizona (9-10, 1-7)
11. Oregon (6-13, 0-8)

* Utah is 7th over WSU because of head-to-head record. 

This weekend, the Washington schools visit the Bay Area, the L.A. schools host the mountain schools, the Arizona schools both host #43 Denver, and Oregon is (thankfully, I assume) idle. Oregon continues to have just 5 healthy players, and Sangwan is still not listed on the roster. I'm curious as to what the story is there. 

After this weekend, we have a mountain road trip to play CU and Utah, and the week after that, we head to Berkeley for the regular-season finale. But there should be a lot of separation after this weekend.