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Post by BeachbytheBay on Jul 23, 2017 9:57:04 GMT -5
Exciting season coming up. A season in transition. Time for predictions. The conference and a lot of teams at the crossroads. For the 3-4 years, discussions of whether Shoji & BG should retire and move on cropped up all year. Other than Stork @ Northridge, every head coach was hired this decade. BG & Shoji were great, but frankly, I think the two coaching changes are a shot in the arm - no longer will the programs be in the delaying the inevitable mode of the last 3-4 years.
the 4 Big Departures:
Hawaii: Shoji & Nikki Taylor. Long Beach: BG & Nele Barber
The 4 Headliner Arrivals Hawaii: Robyn Ah Mow-Santos. I think she'll bring a new dynamic to Hawaii. She'll bring a new focus to the program. It'll be OH by committee replacing go-to Nikki Taylor Long Beach: Team McKienzie-Fuerbringer & just in time All-Conference UNLV setter Alexis Patterson. With Barber gone, having a high quality experienced setter is a massive get for McKinezie-Fuerbringer/Long Beach. Cal Poly: Torrey Van Winden, OH from UCLA. Will Van Winden the last piece of the puzzle to push Poly to the top of the Big West.
Prediction: Seems like one of the most wide open races, since Hawaii arrived, for the title. As usual, it's imperative for mid-major teams to score quality wins early in the season to bolster the conference. Van Winden & Patterson coming over to the Big West should help make that more likely.
Cal Poly Hawaii Long Beach State UCSB Davis Irvine Northridge Riverside Fullerton
Team Capsules to follow:
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Post by jake on Jul 23, 2017 13:43:04 GMT -5
Exciting season coming up. A season in transition. Time for predictions. The conference and a lot of teams at the crossroads. For the 3-4 years, discussions of whether Shoji & BG should retire and move on cropped up all year. Other than Stork @ Northridge, every head coach was hired this decade. BG & Shoji were great, but frankly, I think the two coaching changes are a shot in the arm - no longer will the programs be in the delaying the inevitable mode of the last 3-4 years. the 4 Big Departures: Hawaii: Shoji & Nikki Taylor. Long Beach: BG & Nele Barber The 4 Headliner Arrivals Hawaii: Robyn Ah Mow-Santos. I think she'll bring a new dynamic to Hawaii. She'll bring a new focus to the program. It'll be OH by committee replacing go-to Nikki Taylor Long Beach: Team McKienzie-Fuerbringer & just in time All-Conference UNLV setter Alexis Patterson. With Barber gone, having a high quality experienced setter is a massive get for McKinezie-Fuerbringer/Long Beach. Cal Poly: Torrey Van Winden, OH from UCLA. Will Van Winden the last piece of the puzzle to push Poly to the top of the Big West. Prediction: Seems like one of the most wide open races, since Hawaii arrived, for the title. As usual, it's imperative for mid-major teams to score quality wins early in the season to bolster the conference. Van Winden & Patterson coming over to the Big West should help make that more likely. Cal Poly Hawaii Long Beach State UCSB Davis Irvine Northridge Riverside Fullerton Team Capsules to follow: All Big West Conference schools will be improved in some capacity >>> coaching, depth, experience and new young/transfer players. It should, without a doubt, be the most exciting season for the Conference in some five years. A season that could produce as many as four post season bids. Think it is still too early to predict how the Big West will shake out, too much talent on all nine teams. The preseason pollsters will undoubtedly play down all the new coaching changes, so a strong OOC W/L record will be key.
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Post by gouci on Jul 23, 2017 14:30:43 GMT -5
I like to see this trend of good players transferring into the Big West continue as opposed to transferring out in the past.
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Post by BeachbytheBay on Jul 23, 2017 22:22:41 GMT -5
Cal Poly:
Big Loss: Taylor Grunewald (graduated) Big Addition: Torrey Van Winden (transferred)
Let's start with the conference favorite. It's likely, for the first time in a long time, that neither Hawaii or Long Beach will be the pre-season coach's pick to win the Big West. Certainly on paper, Cal Poly returns a solid core and 3 all-conference selections from a year ago. They played Stanford to a five sets, scored a road top 25 victory, and finished 3rd. Add to that Torrey Van Winden on the outside, and Poly appears to have everything set to win a Big West title.
Still, it's partly due to the changeovers @ Long Beach & Hawaii that Poly gets annointed this high. However, there are some serious doubts about this Poly team, despite the talent coming back. Yeah their record improved the last two years, but both years were still underperforming. The loss to Arkansas State and the drubbing they took @ Long Beach were inexcusable for that team.
#1, for the last two years, Poly was expected to contend, only each year to fall short. The doubt is Poly has simply not been a very good crunch time team.
#2, the biggie. The two biggest returning 'stars' of the team, Nelson and Adlee Van Winden, so far just haven't produced the type of upper level play a title team needs. It's the difference between looking good and delivering. Nelson hit 0.168, with only 0.5 kps - that's not what you'd expect from a top flight setter as fluid as Nelson. Have opposing Big West coaches figured her out? Is the offense stale? As to Van Winden, she's been getting accolades, but it's almost all due to volume kills, and when a team depends on and goes to their worst hitting attacker (0.185, 1132 swings) as much as Poly does, that points to something fundamentally wrong with how this team offense is being run by the Coach & Setter. Part of it is Van Winden hasn't also been the greatest back-row player.
#3, Poly hasn't had a dominating middle blocker, plus they lost their best middle in Grunewald. Still they return two decent middles in Retoff & Nieman, and how well Retoff advances from her frosh year will be interesting. These two players are the players to watch IMO.
#4, Two straight years without a SINGLE non-conference home match? Man, that is NOT how you promote a team/setter that is the best Poly has had in a decade. It's a big black mark for Crosson, not the way to build up excitement for the program.
So how does Poly get over the hurdle? that's the big question. The serving has to be more aggressive, the back-row needs more discipline, and Crosson has to be a little more inventive and utilize Nelson much much better than he did last year. Poly has been a team that looks really good a lot of the time, but they don't intimidate anyone and they need to, for lack of a better way of putting it, to get cocky and ugly and nasty and play with a little more swagger. It's a big crossroads year for Crosson and the program, and he needs to put Nelson in full attack mode, stop having her rely on going to Adlee Van Winden so much, and design more schemes to the middles. If he needs to bench his two stars a little to send a message and get in their face, then now is the time. It's now or never this season for Poly.
Poly has an experienced team and quality setter, so no excuse for them to not come out of the gate better prepared than their competition, the non-conference schedule really isn't that tough - so by the time they go to the Northwest, they better be in a position to take down Washington or Oregon, or it might be another mediocre year. My guess is they'll be extra motivated, and look for a big season.
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Post by ACE on Jul 23, 2017 23:19:45 GMT -5
As always....appreciate your preview/review of the Big West CCMANLB!!!
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Post by beachgrad on Jul 23, 2017 23:30:24 GMT -5
Torrey Van Winden is Cal Poly's first go to player so I expect them to be a much improved team. If she plays on the right her sister will get a bunch more single blocks this season. Should be a big year for the team and the Big West needs another team to take down some giants.
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trojansc
Legend
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Posts: 27,898
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Post by trojansc on Jul 24, 2017 3:50:14 GMT -5
I think CP is better off to put Torrey Van Winden as a 6-ro OPP
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Post by network155 on Jul 24, 2017 3:58:54 GMT -5
I would put UCSB ahead of Hawaii and Long Beach State at this point. They have the best leftside hitter in the conference returning in Lindsey Ruddins. They also have some veterans returning from injury last season. Coach NLW has a very good incoming class. They have great size, I think the battle will be in the setting position for the Gauchos.
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Post by WahineFan44 on Jul 24, 2017 4:09:23 GMT -5
I would put UCSB ahead of Hawaii and Long Beach State at this point. They have the best leftside hitter in the conference returning in Lindsey Ruddins. They also have some veterans returning from injury last season. Coach NLW has a very good incoming class. They have great size, I think the battle will be in the setting position for the Gauchos. Imo ruddins while good, and the best OH, shes not enough to push ucsb past hawaii. Granato is a very capable OH, and with greeley returning hopefully, imo hawaii will be fine. Few loses here and there but still 1st or 2nd in conference
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Post by network155 on Jul 24, 2017 4:14:00 GMT -5
I would put UCSB ahead of Hawaii and Long Beach State at this point. They have the best leftside hitter in the conference returning in Lindsey Ruddins. They also have some veterans returning from injury last season. Coach NLW has a very good incoming class. They have great size, I think the battle will be in the setting position for the Gauchos. Imo ruddins while good, and the best OH, shes not enough to push ucsb past hawaii. Granato is a very capable OH, and with greeley returning hopefully, imo hawaii will be fine. Few loses here and there but still 1st or 2nd in conference Injuries really plague UCSB last year. Granato is decent, but nowhere near Hawaii's go to player. And while Greeley is supposed to be back 100%, she too is not at the level of Ruddins. Hawaii will be a balanced team. But too many question marks. The Gauchos return a lot of veterans, including incoming freshman Amanda Serex, who is expected to make an immediate impact for the Gauchos and in the conference.
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Post by jake on Jul 24, 2017 10:22:02 GMT -5
I think CP is better off to put Taylor Van Winden as a 6-ro OPP Think you mean ...Torrey. That's all right.
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Post by bayarea on Jul 24, 2017 14:11:44 GMT -5
Cal Poly: #4, Two straight years without a SINGLE non-conference home match? Man, that is NOT how you promote a team/setter that is the best Poly has had in a decade. It's a big black mark for Crosson, not the way to build up excitement for the program. The tough scheduling problem for schools that are on the quarter system, is that 3 of the 4 pre-conference weekends happen before students are on campus, so there is no home-court advantage to scheduling home matches in an empty gym before the opening weekend of school...which is the 3rd week in September. I think it's logistically tough to schedule the right RPI teams and force them to come to your gym on that specific weekend every year.
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Post by BeachbytheBay on Jul 24, 2017 14:22:21 GMT -5
Cal Poly: #4, Two straight years without a SINGLE non-conference home match? Man, that is NOT how you promote a team/setter that is the best Poly has had in a decade. It's a big black mark for Crosson, not the way to build up excitement for the program. The tough scheduling problem for schools that are on the quarter system, is that 3 of the 4 pre-conference weekends happen before students are on campus, so there is no home-court advantage to scheduling home matches in an empty gym before the opening weekend of school...which is the 3rd week in September. I think it's logistically tough to schedule the right RPI teams and force them to come to your gym on that specific weekend every year. that's no excuse to not schedule ANY games for two straight years. It's not just about the student body attendence, Poly has a football team that starts play late August. I understand it's not the easiest, but a good VB team @ Poly won't have an empty gym - it's not correct that there will be no home court advantage - if the coach is doing some smart promoting and scheduling. It's not impossible.
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Post by c4ndlelight on Jul 24, 2017 14:25:28 GMT -5
I imagine SLO's remoteness could make it difficult for Cal Poly to get home preseason matches of the caliber they are looking for. Sure they could get Fresno and Bakersfield to come, but good-for-RPI schools have options and if they are making a Cali trip they're going to go to LA or the Bay or SD.
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trojansc
Legend
All-VolleyTalk 1st Team (2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017), All-VolleyTalk 2nd Team (2016), 2021, 2019 Fantasy League Champion, 2020 Fantasy League Runner Up, 2022 2nd Runner Up
Posts: 27,898
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Post by trojansc on Jul 24, 2017 15:45:31 GMT -5
I imagine SLO's remoteness could make it difficult for Cal Poly to get home preseason matches of the caliber they are looking for. Sure they could get Fresno and Bakersfield to come, but good-for-RPI schools have options and if they are making a Cali trip they're going to go to LA or the Bay or SD. I agree with this. Cal Poly's main goal is to have the best non-conference RPI possible. That means going on the road. Pepperdine is able to get a tournament with Washington, Missouri State, and Wyoming. I don't think it would be very easy for Cal Poly to get a tournament like that. Cal Poly plays in a RPI-gem tournament to open the season. Dayton, High Point, and Northern Illinois. Schools like Long Beach State, Loyola Marymount, Pepperdine, CSUN, Santa Clara, Saint Mary's all have the benefit of being in the SF/LA area so they can also catch teams that are visiting Cali for an extra match or two. They can share courts also. They're able to get in on some better opportunities, particularly at home. You can't say the same thing for a school like Cal Poly. SLO is about half way between LA and San Francisco.
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