[Sakibomb25]

Not the freshmen’s fault…

I beg to disagree. Sayer and Etzler played well. Etzler has exceeded expectations so far with her passing and her defense is getting there. Parks did not. Yes, she got Stanford to where it needed to be and be put in a position to win... but during crunch time, you could tell her sets, especially to the outside, were way off. Rubin and Kurt could do nothing but dink the ball over. In particular, with Stanford up 10-8 in the fifth, Parks set Kurt too low and too far off the net and all Kurt could do was free ball it over. The pass wasn't bad, the set was. And I'm not saying we would have won the point - Kurt could have sprayed the ball out of gotten blocked. But the point was the set was not there and it put Stanford behind the 8 ball. And that happened multiple times when it mattered the most to both Kurt and Rubin.

With that being said, Parks is going to be a good player for Stanford... but until she can get her consistency to the outsides down, Stanford will continue to struggle to put games away they should have won and I'd rather have Yu running the offense until that happens. Parks' sets to Sayer and Harvey were pretty spot on... just her sets (in-system and out-of-system) to the outsides were so inconsistent.

Hats off to Stanford though - definitely wasn't a result I was expecting and it proves we can definitely be a contender for the Final Four.

Though I do wish we would be more conservative with our serving when it's so late in the game (I'm looking at you Kurt... in both the second and fifth games).

[Sakibomb25]

Not the freshmen’s fault…

I beg to disagree. Sayer and Etzler played well. Etzler has exceeded expectations so far with her passing and her defense is getting there. Parks did not. Yes, she got Stanford to where it needed to be and be put in a position to win... but during crunch time, you could tell her sets, especially to the outside, were way off. Rubin and Kurt could do nothing but dink the ball over. In particular, with Stanford up 10-8 in the fifth, Parks set Kurt too low and too far off the net and all Kurt could do was free ball it over. The pass wasn't bad, the set was. And I'm not saying we would have won the point - Kurt could have sprayed the ball out of gotten blocked. But the point was the set was not there and it put Stanford behind the 8 ball. And that happened multiple times when it mattered the most to both Kurt and Rubin.

With that being said, Parks is going to be a good player for Stanford... but until she can get her consistency to the outsides down, Stanford will continue to struggle to put games away they should have won and I'd rather have Yu running the offense until that happens. Parks' sets to Sayer and Harvey were pretty spot on... just her sets (in-system and out-of-system) to the outsides were so inconsistent.

Hats off to Stanford though - definitely wasn't a result I was expecting and it proves we can definitely be a contender for the Final Four.

Though I do wish we would be more conservative with our serving when it's so late in the game (I'm looking at you Kurt... in both the second and fifth games).