09-04-2024, 09:52 AM
I wouldn't worry about polls pre-season particularly with a developing younger team (half our team). What matters is improvement and development. We were better against Wisconsin than Minnesota. What will matter for end of year seeding is RPI (which will be great) and beating Pitt & Louisville to win the conference. The winner of the ACC should be a #1 seed.
DS. I was a little surprised too to see Cawa over Pringle as the second DS after Beaven. Guess Pringle is being recruited over. I trust Hambly to pick his best players. I wouldn't be shocked it Yu ends up the serving specialist over Pringle as the year goes on. She has done well in her limited action. I know Hambly follows closely the percentage of service points won by each player. It's not aces. For instance, Kipp led the team in aces but wasn't top 5 as "best server". It's all about points won. Great serving is getting the opponent out of system making it a 50-50 or better that we win the point. Stanford was great at that as a team last weekend. Hambly, as we all know, does not care about service errors. To him, it's a little like strike outs in baseball today. An out is an out and what matters is your on base percentage.
What I've noticed most about the first few weeks of the season is that teams with hard to return serves are the teams winning. That and blocks. SMU won at the service line. We won at the service line. I will keep quoting WI Coach Kelly Sheffield that Stanford serving is "narly". Hope it stays that way. We need to improve our blocking which I'm confident will happen with more playing time together. I think Andrew will be a top defensive player and our new OHs will get better and better with more action.
DS. I was a little surprised too to see Cawa over Pringle as the second DS after Beaven. Guess Pringle is being recruited over. I trust Hambly to pick his best players. I wouldn't be shocked it Yu ends up the serving specialist over Pringle as the year goes on. She has done well in her limited action. I know Hambly follows closely the percentage of service points won by each player. It's not aces. For instance, Kipp led the team in aces but wasn't top 5 as "best server". It's all about points won. Great serving is getting the opponent out of system making it a 50-50 or better that we win the point. Stanford was great at that as a team last weekend. Hambly, as we all know, does not care about service errors. To him, it's a little like strike outs in baseball today. An out is an out and what matters is your on base percentage.
What I've noticed most about the first few weeks of the season is that teams with hard to return serves are the teams winning. That and blocks. SMU won at the service line. We won at the service line. I will keep quoting WI Coach Kelly Sheffield that Stanford serving is "narly". Hope it stays that way. We need to improve our blocking which I'm confident will happen with more playing time together. I think Andrew will be a top defensive player and our new OHs will get better and better with more action.