[BostonCard]

I'm a little sour on Hamblys strategy of mixing and matching combinations of IMPORTANT players mid game. I'm all for players battling out who deserves court time in practice and even if needed trying different combos in preseason winnable games but why in a top 6 matchup against the top team in the conference? 

Bringing in Yu in the third set puts so much pressure on her to essentially turn the game around and lead the team to a comeback back victory. All the while Parks is slumped and dejected on the sidelines for getting subbed out. The only set this game we WON was the set Kurt played in and not Blyshov yet Kurt gets subbed out in set 2.  Was the team in a better rhythm from that point on? No because set 2 and set 3 were not really very competitive for Stanford at all. I don't think Stanford is helping itself by using this strategy. We looked bad at Virginia Tech, Notre Dame, and pretty bad most of today against Louisville. At some point establishing a go-to rotation, chemistry on the court, and consistency has to happen to make a deep NCAA run and it isn't happening so far this season with the constant shuffling.

Both Kurt and Parks were struggling today.  I don't necessarily think it helped to sub them out, but given that the players who subbed in are not clearly a step down, it wasn't a crazy idea.  Kurt had a Blutarsky-like hitting percentage of 0.000, and mustered only two kills in two sets.  Blyashov wasn't much better (.059), but a change wasn't unjustified.  Likewise, when Parks went out in the middle of the third set, we had really been struggling for a while (all of the second set and the first half of the third set).  Yu helped stabilize things; we mounted a bit of a comeback to get the third set even before Louisville pulled away, and the fourth set was much more competitive.

Don't get me wrong; especially with a new setter, giving Parks more game-time experience so she can better connect with the hitters probably makes sense in the long run, but sometimes games like this present a no-win situation for the coach.  What we had going on wasn't working.  You spin your wheels hoping to come upon some combination that fixes the problems, but at the end of the day, this wasn't an issue with just a couple of players.  Rubin had an uncharacteristic 2 receiving errors; Pringle, who had one job, also had two receiving errors.  It wasn't anything clearly wrong, but we were just out of sorts.

BC

[BostonCard]

I'm a little sour on Hamblys strategy of mixing and matching combinations of IMPORTANT players mid game. I'm all for players battling out who deserves court time in practice and even if needed trying different combos in preseason winnable games but why in a top 6 matchup against the top team in the conference? 

Bringing in Yu in the third set puts so much pressure on her to essentially turn the game around and lead the team to a comeback back victory. All the while Parks is slumped and dejected on the sidelines for getting subbed out. The only set this game we WON was the set Kurt played in and not Blyshov yet Kurt gets subbed out in set 2.  Was the team in a better rhythm from that point on? No because set 2 and set 3 were not really very competitive for Stanford at all. I don't think Stanford is helping itself by using this strategy. We looked bad at Virginia Tech, Notre Dame, and pretty bad most of today against Louisville. At some point establishing a go-to rotation, chemistry on the court, and consistency has to happen to make a deep NCAA run and it isn't happening so far this season with the constant shuffling.

Both Kurt and Parks were struggling today.  I don't necessarily think it helped to sub them out, but given that the players who subbed in are not clearly a step down, it wasn't a crazy idea.  Kurt had a Blutarsky-like hitting percentage of 0.000, and mustered only two kills in two sets.  Blyashov wasn't much better (.059), but a change wasn't unjustified.  Likewise, when Parks went out in the middle of the third set, we had really been struggling for a while (all of the second set and the first half of the third set).  Yu helped stabilize things; we mounted a bit of a comeback to get the third set even before Louisville pulled away, and the fourth set was much more competitive.

Don't get me wrong; especially with a new setter, giving Parks more game-time experience so she can better connect with the hitters probably makes sense in the long run, but sometimes games like this present a no-win situation for the coach.  What we had going on wasn't working.  You spin your wheels hoping to come upon some combination that fixes the problems, but at the end of the day, this wasn't an issue with just a couple of players.  Rubin had an uncharacteristic 2 receiving errors; Pringle, who had one job, also had two receiving errors.  It wasn't anything clearly wrong, but we were just out of sorts.

BC