2015 B1G

[wovbcoach]

Any predictions?
Best Player?
Surprise Team?
Tourney Teams?
Will the B1G earn another title?

[bluepenquin]

The Conference will be much deeper and get 9 teams in the tournament. No surprises - the same 9 teams that have made it in the past couple years. Will exceed their seedings and get the most teams into the sweet 16 and Penn State will win the NC. Is any of this getting old.

Just to be a bit different - I will predict all of the above, except Stanford finally wins the NC, again (a different sort of getting old). And we get 1 year closer to the day when some of the top HS recruits go to a school outside of the B1G/PAC/Texas.

[pogoball]

Agree with bluepenquin, except the predictability of the 9 teams. PSU, Nebraska, Michigan State, Illinois & Wisconsin seem like locks. Ohio State, Michigan, Minnesota & Purdue would be the traditional next group, but Northwestern, Indiana & Iowa all showed life this year with young rosters. Freshman Abbott from NU is very impressive.

Also agree that Stanford is my choice as NC next year.

I won't predict the conference winner if they still have the stupid unbalanced schedule. Penn State will be the best team, but could lose out to a team with a more favorable schedule.

[mnsports255]

POY: Megan Courtney
FOY: Jordyn Poulter
1st place: Penn State

NCAA Teams: Penn State, Nebraska, Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio State, Michigan State, Michigan, Minnesota, Purdue
*Minnesota will be back and so will Purdue and Michigan.

[badgerbreath]

I wonder how Michigan will deal with loss of Dannemiller. Also, I'm not seeing how Purdue fixes the problems they had this year with the incoming players, and having lost Nichol. Still, they were probably good enough to be in NCAAs this year, but suffered from the RPI fiasco. I do think Minnesota will bounce back a bit.

[nik12]

Don't know anything about each team's respective scheduling in conference, but I am expecting a razor-thin race between Nebraska, Penn State and Wisconsin.

[pogoball]

Wisconsin loses a ton this year. Carlini will keep them relevant, but conference championship might be a bit much next year.

[rampageripster]

I know two things. Penn State will win it all and either Rutgers or Maryland will finish in last. The rest is a crapshoot, but here are some educated guesses...Michigan and Minnesota will be better, not sure about Purdue. Ohio State won't overachieve as much, but won't be given such a low preseason expectation. Illinois and Nebraska will fight for 3nd. Not sure what to expect from Wisconsin, but I don't see a total free fall. Iowa and Northwestern will be stronger and could threaten to get a tourney bid with a couple of well-times upsets

[firedup]

Dec 21, 2014 23:04:29 GMT -5 badgerbreath said:

I wonder how Michigan will deal with loss of Dannemiller. Also, I'm not seeing how Purdue fixes the problems they had this year with the incoming players, and having lost Nichol. Still, they were probably good enough to be in NCAAs this year, but suffered from the RPI fiasco. I do think Minnesota will bounce back a bit.

Losing Lexi to graduation will pose a significant hurdle for the Wolverines to overcome, as she was significantly more important than the amount of buzz she generated, especially compared to other setters in the conference.  That said, ironically, Michigan and Carly Warner, who spelled Dannemiller while she recovered from mono the first month of the 2014 season, will benefit from the playing time Warner received.  It won't be the first time setting the team this spring for Carly, nor at the start of the 2015 campaign.  Redshirt Sophomore Cindy Zhou and Freshman Maddy Abbott, daughter of Michigan alum and 10 year MLB professional pitcher Jim Abbott, will push Warner for playing time at the setter position.

On the outside, look for redshirt Juniors Ally Davis and Kelly Murphy to come back with a vengeance, joining Sophomores Caroline Knop and Adeja Lambert, and incoming freshman and Carly Skjodt (Indiana's Gatorade Player of Year and Under Armour's East team MVP) making for tremendous competition in Cliff Keen and all other B1G gyms in 2015.  Rightside lefty, Sophomore Katherine Malke, returns with having played a solid amount in her freshman campaign.  

The Middles will all return as well, with Junior Abby Cole (who should have made a higher team than Honorable Mention AA) leading the way along with Senior Krystalyn Goode, Sophomore Claire Kieffer Wright, Redshirt Sophomore Gabby Bulic and incoming freshman Cori Crocker.  Again, expect a great deal of competition from this group.

Along the back row, Senior Libero Tiffany Morales, and Senior DS/libero Lindsey Lerg will provide the leadership and talent that has seen Michigan to the National Semifinals.  They will be supported by Sophomore Knop if she isn't contributing on the OH as well as Jenna Lerg, Lindsey's younger sister and a recent Miss Michigan Volleyball nominee.  Look for this group to do a great job of keeping Michigan in system and in points with solid serve receive and floor defense.

While many B1G team supporters are rightfully excited about their teams, I think that anyone that is a Maize and Blue fan will be pleasantly surprised by all of the talent and potential of this 2015 team.  The experience they received in 2014, while not enough to get them to the NCAA tournament this season, should create enough to get this team back to the 2015 tournament, in spite of the loss of Dannemiller. 

[Boof1224]

Dec 22, 2014 0:27:47 GMT -5 rampageripster said:

I know two things. Penn State will win it all and either Rutgers or Maryland will finish in last. The rest is a crapshoot, but here are some educated guesses...Michigan and Minnesota will be better, not sure about Purdue. Ohio State won't overachieve as much, but won't be given such a low preseason expectation. Illinois and Nebraska will fight for 3nd. Not sure what to expect from Wisconsin, but I don't see a total free fall. Iowa and Northwestern will be stronger and could threaten to get a tourney bid with a couple of well-times upsets

I know I'm psu fan and you must hate saying psu is gonna win it all and I'd say maybe but in my opinion that highly touted fresh class for stanford are all seniors next year. Stanford should be the favorites. All I know is if stanford doesn't win it all next year that highly touted class could be questioned. Supposedly the two highest touted classes all time are that stanford class and psu 2014 class. Well one is 1 for 1 other is 0 for 3. You should be excited though. The way ohio state played in tourney things could be looking up for buckeyes. Could make some noise in next years tourney. I really thought they had wisconsin. Clean up those mistakes and ohio state could make some noise 

[vbnerd]

Dec 22, 2014 0:09:44 GMT -5 pogoball said:

Wisconsin loses a ton this year. Carlini will keep them relevant, but conference championship might be a bit much next year.

I wouldn't disagree, however I think this past season another Big 10 team just proved that a team can sustain heavy losses with an exceptional leader/setter and a very talented freshman class.

[Boof1224]

Dec 22, 2014 2:13:56 GMT -5 vbnerd said:

Dec 22, 2014 0:09:44 GMT -5 pogoball said:

Wisconsin loses a ton this year. Carlini will keep them relevant, but conference championship might be a bit much next year.

I wouldn't disagree, however I think this past season another Big 10 team just proved that a team can sustain heavy losses with an exceptional leader/setter and a very talented freshman class.

Could wisconsin get back of course. Nebraska just impressed me a lot in tourney. If they can find consistency in my opinion they're second best team in conference 

[noreaster]

Dec 21, 2014 19:16:40 GMT -5 bluepenquin said:

The Conference will be much deeper and get 9 teams in the tournament. No surprises - the same 9 teams that have made it in the past couple years. Will exceed their seedings and get the most teams into the sweet 16 and Penn State will win the NC. Is any of this getting old.

Just to be a bit different - I will predict all of the above, except Stanford finally wins the NC, again (a different sort of getting old). And we get 1 year closer to the day when some of the top HS recruits go to a school outside of the B1G/PAC/Texas.

The conference being better may not help enough to get 4 more teams in. They had a winning record vs everybody but the Pac 12, winning about 80% of the matches vs most leagues. The sideways results (excluding Maryland, Rutgers, and Indiana who are still going to stink) would be Illinois vs Va Tech, Nebraska vs Florida State, Minnesota vs Louisville, Michigan State vs Long Island, Michigan vs Kansas St and Arkansas, and Purdue vs St. Louis and Western Kentucky. Could 8 matches be worth 3-4 bids? I'd be surprised.

That said, the conference needs to schedule smarter, as we discussed before...

Jul 21, 2014 10:52:43 GMT -5 rainbowbadger said:

Jul 21, 2014 1:33:22 GMT -5 noreaster said:

You simply have to love that in a July 14th release Rutgers can announce their non-conference tournaments but not their opponents. Do they not know? Or is the SID just too lasy? For those of us with access to the miracle that is the internet the following teams are at the tournament Rutgers has named, so I hope we can assume that Rutgers non-Big 10 schedule includes many of these teams.

@air Force 218
SIUE 253
Winthrop 243
Cal 35

@seton Hall 79
Cornell 227
Siena 209
UNLV 126

@rhode Island 193
NJIT 301
Cincinatti 270

@rutgers
American 30
Princeton 248
Akron 254
James Madison 154

Then Maryland actually posted their opponents, so we know they play
Elon 215
Liberty 187
San Jose (with nobody returning)
Lehigh 133
East Tennessee 76
George Mason 268
Ga State 264
Ap State 153
Washington
USC

I'd think those number would weigh on every team in the Big 10, just a little. I could see the Big 10 down to 6 teams in the dance.

This is concerning. It also exacerbates the inequality caused by the scheduling contortions necessary to avoid breaking the conference into divisions and maintain some semblance of a round-robin format. Some may say that Wisconsin gets it easy by only playing PSU and Nebraska once, and getting Rutgers twice and Maryland once. But with the latter two's bottom-of-the-barrell OOC scheduling, every match we play them is one we have to make up for in our own OOC scheduling. Whereas teams in other conferences get roughly an equal RPI impact from their conference schedule, the impact of the conference schedule is different for each B1G team depending on who they play.

I strongly sense that last year, when the B1G got eight teams into the tournament, will be the last year we get so many. We'll definitely get five, maybe six. I find more to be highly unlikely.

The Big 10 teams need to schedule smarter to accommodate for Rutgers and Maryland until Rutgers and Maryland get better. It was a theory over the summer but seeing how things shook out they need to pay closer attention. Purdue played 8 matches to teams with a Pablo below 200 - Rutgers being 2 of them. Northwestern played 5 such teams plus Rutgers which was harder to notice since Northwestern stunk in conference. Michigan State had 3 such teams plus Rutgers and had 6 tournament teams before starting the Big 10 schedule, and they were one of the last teams in. Ohio State played 2 teams below 150 and they got in.

I point this out because presumably they could all get past a team ranked #120 without much more effort than they'll use to get past a team ranked #220. You will always have some teams that are better or worse than you expect, and they'll never be perfect beating everybody they are supposed to, but playing teams that go 17-12 instead of 12-17 helps the RPI for the entire conference and help them get more teams in.

[Paulj]

Dec 22, 2014 0:53:33 GMT -5 firedup said:

Dec 21, 2014 23:04:29 GMT -5 badgerbreath said:

I wonder how Michigan will deal with loss of Dannemiller. Also, I'm not seeing how Purdue fixes the problems they had this year with the incoming players, and having lost Nichol. Still, they were probably good enough to be in NCAAs this year, but suffered from the RPI fiasco. I do think Minnesota will bounce back a bit.

Losing Lexi to graduation will pose a significant hurdle for the Wolverines to overcome, as she was significantly more important than the amount of buzz she generated, especially compared to other setters in the conference.  That said, ironically, Michigan and Carly Warner, who spelled Dannemiller while she recovered from mono the first month of the 2014 season, will benefit from the playing time Warner received.  It won't be the first time setting the team this spring for Carly, nor at the start of the 2015 campaign.  Redshirt Sophomore Cindy Zhou and Freshman Maddy Abbott, daughter of Michigan alum and 10 year MLB professional pitcher Jim Abbott, will push Warner for playing time at the setter position.

On the outside, look for redshirt Juniors Ally Davis and Kelly Murphy to come back with a vengeance, joining Sophomores Caroline Knop and Adeja Lambert, and incoming freshman and Carly Skjodt (Indiana's Gatorade Player of Year and Under Armour's East team MVP) making for tremendous competition in Cliff Keen and all other B1G gyms in 2015.  Rightside lefty, Sophomore Katherine Malke, returns with having played a solid amount in her freshman campaign.  

The Middles will all return as well, with Junior Abby Cole (who should have made a higher team than Honorable Mention AA) leading the way along with Senior Krystalyn Goode, Sophomore Claire Kieffer Wright, Redshirt Sophomore Gabby Bulic and incoming freshman Cori Crocker.  Again, expect a great deal of competition from this group.

Along the back row, Senior Libero Tiffany Morales, and Senior DS/libero Lindsey Lerg will provide the leadership and talent that has seen Michigan to the National Semifinals.  They will be supported by Sophomore Knop if she isn't contributing on the OH as well as Jenna Lerg, Lindsey's younger sister and a recent Miss Michigan Volleyball nominee.  Look for this group to do a great job of keeping Michigan in system and in points with solid serve receive and floor defense.

While many B1G team supporters are rightfully excited about their teams, I think that anyone that is a Maize and Blue fan will be pleasantly surprised by all of the talent and potential of this 2015 team.  The experience they received in 2014, while not enough to get them to the NCAA tournament this season, should create enough to get this team back to the 2015 tournament, in spite of the loss of Dannemiller. 

I have been to quite a few games over the past few years and I simply didn't see Lexi's influence.  I think Caroline is a leader and she will have a great career.

[Paulj]

LET'S GO BLUE!