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Post by vobally on Dec 10, 2017 2:34:15 GMT -5
So now that the season is over (or has been over), figured it was time to start a new thread for the new upcoming era of Husky volleyball.
Having graduated a talented senior class, we now enter the K. Cook era of recruits.
A potential line-up for next season could be: OH: Bajema, Crenshaw MB: Sanders, Niece (Occasional Grote sub) OPP: Cole (Possible back-row sub- idk who) S: Powell L: McPherson
Questions for next season: -Will Cook be aiming for a Libero transfer/OH transfer? (any names?) -Status on Maria B. (could potentially play OPP over Cole?) -Does Claire Hoffman play? (Cook really seems to like her) -Where does Julye play into all of this? (serving sub?)
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Post by alwayslearning on Dec 11, 2017 20:46:58 GMT -5
Good questions, vobally.
It's been interesting watching the NCAA regionals over the weekend. Having watched the Huskies all season, and having more limited TV exposure to non-Pac 12 teams, a few things jump out when watching the better teams. First, all the teams in the Final Four and most others that made it to the Elite Eight simply have more athleticism than the Huskies showed this season. The Huskies strength has been serve and pass. Their weakness has been offensive production. The tournament teams we've been watching generally have at least one and often several elite hammers who can put down out of system sets. The closest the Huskies came in 2017 was Carly DeHoog in the first part of the season, but even Carly usually needed a good, in-system set to be terminal. At the end of the season, Kara Bajema showed flashes of brilliance and the ability to be terminal and that's encouraging for 2018. But there was little else to get excited about with regard to offensive production. You simply aren't going to go deep in the tournament without elite level outside hitters to bail you out of long rallies.
Defense has been another area that's been interesting to watch in the Regionals. I think the 2017 Huskies can block with some of the better teams, but they cannot play floor defense at the level we've been seeing over the weekend. The team defense displayed by Stanford, Penn State, Nebraska, and many other teams is simply quicker and better on the first contact than the Huskies showed this season. I fear that the 2018 Huskies won't be much better unless some of the freshmen really step up or Cook finds a transfer libero to shore up the defense.
The one phase of the game where I think the 2017 Huskies could really compete with the best of the best is serving. We beat a Stanford team that was pretty clearly superior in every other phase of the game (well, maybe about equal in serve receive ability) and the reason was better serving. Watching tournament games, I've been a little surprised at just how anemic some of the serving has been. For example, Wisconsin stood a real chance of beating Stanford had they just been better at serving. The Badgers' offense was wonderfully potent. Ditto for Kentucky in their game against Nebraska. I was impressed with Kentucky's overall game but they had way too many serving errors and not enough service pressure. The Texas serving game was just weak.
So for 2018, I hope Cook and Co. work hard to preserve the Huskies' team identity as an elite serving and passing team. Bajema should provide a great option on the outside, our middle attack/defense should be good, Julye might fill her potential as a second hammer on the outside, but my guess is that the team will struggle to terminate when playing tough competition. Serving and passing can go a long way towards compensating for that while the freshman find their feet.
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Post by luckydawg on Dec 11, 2017 21:53:46 GMT -5
So now that the season is over (or has been over), figured it was time to start a new thread for the new upcoming era of Husky volleyball. Having graduated a talented senior class, we now enter the K. Cook era of recruits. A potential line-up for next season could be: OH: Bajema, Crenshaw MB: Sanders, Niece (Occasional Grote sub) OPP: Cole (Possible back-row sub- idk who) S: Powell L: McPherson Questions for next season: -Will Cook be aiming for a Libero transfer/OH transfer? (any names?) -Status on Maria B. (could potentially play OPP over Cole?) -Does Claire Hoffman play? (Cook really seems to like her) -Where does Julye play into all of this? (serving sub?) I have great hopes for Maria B. She played very well during the team's Europe trip last summer and has played at a high level internationally.
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Post by vobally on Dec 12, 2017 22:52:23 GMT -5
So now that the season is over (or has been over), figured it was time to start a new thread for the new upcoming era of Husky volleyball. Having graduated a talented senior class, we now enter the K. Cook era of recruits. A potential line-up for next season could be: OH: Bajema, Crenshaw MB: Sanders, Niece (Occasional Grote sub) OPP: Cole (Possible back-row sub- idk who) S: Powell L: McPherson Questions for next season: -Will Cook be aiming for a Libero transfer/OH transfer? (any names?) -Status on Maria B. (could potentially play OPP over Cole?) -Does Claire Hoffman play? (Cook really seems to like her) -Where does Julye play into all of this? (serving sub?) I have great hopes for Maria B. She played very well during the team's Europe trip last summer and has played at a high level internationally. I hope you're right
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Post by superfan1 on Dec 12, 2017 23:01:26 GMT -5
Good questions, vobally. It's been interesting watching the NCAA regionals over the weekend. Having watched the Huskies all season, and having more limited TV exposure to non-Pac 12 teams, a few things jump out when watching the better teams. First, all the teams in the Final Four and most others that made it to the Elite Eight simply have more athleticism than the Huskies showed this season. The Huskies strength has been serve and pass. Their weakness has been offensive production. The tournament teams we've been watching generally have at least one and often several elite hammers who can put down out of system sets. The closest the Huskies came in 2017 was Carly DeHoog in the first part of the season, but even Carly usually needed a good, in-system set to be terminal. At the end of the season, Kara Bajema showed flashes of brilliance and the ability to be terminal and that's encouraging for 2018. But there was little else to get excited about with regard to offensive production. You simply aren't going to go deep in the tournament without elite level outside hitters to bail you out of long rallies. Defense has been another area that's been interesting to watch in the Regionals. I think the 2017 Huskies can block with some of the better teams, but they cannot play floor defense at the level we've been seeing over the weekend. The team defense displayed by Stanford, Penn State, Nebraska, and many other teams is simply quicker and better on the first contact than the Huskies showed this season. I fear that the 2018 Huskies won't be much better unless some of the freshmen really step up or Cook finds a transfer libero to shore up the defense. The one phase of the game where I think the 2017 Huskies could really compete with the best of the best is serving. We beat a Stanford team that was pretty clearly superior in every other phase of the game (well, maybe about equal in serve receive ability) and the reason was better serving. Watching tournament games, I've been a little surprised at just how anemic some of the serving has been. For example, Wisconsin stood a real chance of beating Stanford had they just been better at serving. The Badgers' offense was wonderfully potent. Ditto for Kentucky in their game against Nebraska. I was impressed with Kentucky's overall game but they had way too many serving errors and not enough service pressure. The Texas serving game was just weak. So for 2018, I hope Cook and Co. work hard to preserve the Huskies' team identity as an elite serving and passing team. Bajema should provide a great option on the outside, our middle attack/defense should be good, Julye might fill her potential as a second hammer on the outside, but my guess is that the team will struggle to terminate when playing tough competition. Serving and passing can go a long way towards compensating for that while the freshman find their feet. I think these are very good questions. The athleticism of the 2017 Huskies wasn't on par with other top teams across the nation, which is why I think there were a lot of skeptics, we'll see if 2018 can help bring that back up a bit. p.s. Wisconsin did serve pretty well, Stanford's just a VERY good ball control team. Sunderland and Kiraly mentioned a couple times that they were impressed with how well all of Stanford was receiving.
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Post by tomclen on Dec 16, 2017 12:10:25 GMT -5
Good questions, vobally. It's been interesting watching the NCAA regionals over the weekend. Having watched the Huskies all season, and having more limited TV exposure to non-Pac 12 teams, a few things jump out when watching the better teams. First, all the teams in the Final Four and most others that made it to the Elite Eight simply have more athleticism than the Huskies showed this season. The Huskies strength has been serve and pass. Their weakness has been offensive production. The tournament teams we've been watching generally have at least one and often several elite hammers who can put down out of system sets. The closest the Huskies came in 2017 was Carly DeHoog in the first part of the season, but even Carly usually needed a good, in-system set to be terminal. At the end of the season, Kara Bajema showed flashes of brilliance and the ability to be terminal and that's encouraging for 2018. But there was little else to get excited about with regard to offensive production. You simply aren't going to go deep in the tournament without elite level outside hitters to bail you out of long rallies. . I'd agree that not having a go-to terminal hammer was a shortfall for this team. It also seemed like there was no hyper-competitive, take-names and kick-a** team leader. Of course, I'm saying that looking from the outside....I can't really know the team chemistry. But watching Nebraska and Florida, while I'd agree they're more athletic, they also seem to have fiery team leaders who just can not accept losing.
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Post by alwayslearning on Dec 16, 2017 12:55:55 GMT -5
Good questions, vobally. It's been interesting watching the NCAA regionals over the weekend. Having watched the Huskies all season, and having more limited TV exposure to non-Pac 12 teams, a few things jump out when watching the better teams. First, all the teams in the Final Four and most others that made it to the Elite Eight simply have more athleticism than the Huskies showed this season. The Huskies strength has been serve and pass. Their weakness has been offensive production. The tournament teams we've been watching generally have at least one and often several elite hammers who can put down out of system sets. The closest the Huskies came in 2017 was Carly DeHoog in the first part of the season, but even Carly usually needed a good, in-system set to be terminal. At the end of the season, Kara Bajema showed flashes of brilliance and the ability to be terminal and that's encouraging for 2018. But there was little else to get excited about with regard to offensive production. You simply aren't going to go deep in the tournament without elite level outside hitters to bail you out of long rallies. . I'd agree that not having a go-to terminal hammer was a shortfall for this team. It also seemed like there was no hyper-competitive, take-names and kick-a** team leader. Of course, I'm saying that looking from the outside....I can't really know the team chemistry. But watching Nebraska and Florida, while I'd agree they're more athletic, they also seem to have fiery team leaders who just can not accept losing. You're right, Tom, we can only guess about team chemistry from the outside, but all indications were that the Huskies could have used more on court leadership this year, and for me the most telling thing was the number of five-set matches and the number of losses in those matches. Having said that, I think that the Huskies still lacked several pieces of a FF team. And having said that, I think the Huskies could have made a deeper run in the tournament (one or two more matches) if they had settled on the lineup they were running at the end of the season earlier -- even just a week or two earlier.
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Post by notpriddy (COIF) on Dec 16, 2017 15:03:14 GMT -5
What is Keegan Cook's coaching demeanor? Is he laid-back? My impression is that teams generally tend to mimic the personality of their coach. And I don't mean only what is seen at match time, but what is the coaching energy in the gym during practice. The only time I saw UW play was vs. Illinois, and the Huskies did not seem very inspired. On the other hand, first year Illinois coach, Chris Tamas, has really energized the veteran Illinois players as well as the newcomers. Tamas seems to have that coaching personality that players want and feed off of. It seems fairly rare in volleyball coaches.
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Post by tomclen on Dec 16, 2017 15:05:04 GMT -5
What is Keegan Cook's coaching demeanor? Is he laid-back? My impression is that teams generally tend to mimic the personality of their coach. And I don't mean only what is seen at match time, but what is the coaching energy in the gym during practice. The only time I saw UW play was vs. Illinois, and the Huskies did not seem very inspired. On the other hand, first year Illinois coach, Chris Tamas, has really energized the veteran Illinois players as well as the newcomers. Tamas seems to have that coaching personality that players want and feed off of. It seems fairly rare in volleyball coaches. Probably some connection between coaching demeanor and players. But there are exceptions. Dunning and Inky, for example.
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Post by tomclen on Dec 16, 2017 15:06:42 GMT -5
On the bright side....
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Post by alwayslearning on Dec 16, 2017 16:10:06 GMT -5
What is Keegan Cook's coaching demeanor? Is he laid-back? My impression is that teams generally tend to mimic the personality of their coach. And I don't mean only what is seen at match time, but what is the coaching energy in the gym during practice. The only time I saw UW play was vs. Illinois, and the Huskies did not seem very inspired. On the other hand, first year Illinois coach, Chris Tamas, has really energized the veteran Illinois players as well as the newcomers. Tamas seems to have that coaching personality that players want and feed off of. It seems fairly rare in volleyball coaches. I wouldn't characterize Cook as laid back. He tends to be fairly vocal during games, in the sense that he offers lots of comments to players coming off the floor. Seems like a natural teacher to me. That said, I'm not sure that a coach's demeanor on the sidelines is a very good predictor, at all, of the team's heart, hustle, etc. Look at John Cook or Russ Rose. Few have achieved their level of success, but they are generally quiet to the point of being almost completely non-emotional during the times when they are not addressing the team. Or MacLaughlin at UW. Very detached.
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Post by ay2013 on Dec 18, 2017 16:30:29 GMT -5
Soooo.....Libero transfer?
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Post by WahineFan44 on Dec 18, 2017 16:45:16 GMT -5
Soooo.....Libero transfer? Do yall have any open scholorships to give? You lose 6 if im counting correctly
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Post by vobally on Dec 18, 2017 16:57:24 GMT -5
Soooo.....Libero transfer? Do yall have any open scholorships to give? You lose 6 if im counting correctly On Scholarship: Julye Bajema Niece McPherson Sanders Crenshaw Powell Hoffman Grote Cole (?) Maria B. Total: 10 or 11 So 1 including Maria B. and 2 without.
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Post by luckydawg on Dec 18, 2017 18:05:12 GMT -5
Do yall have any open scholorships to give? You lose 6 if im counting correctly On Scholarship: Julye Bajema Niece McPherson Sanders Crenshaw Powell Hoffman Grote Cole (?) Maria B. Total: 10 or 11 So 1 including Maria B. and 2 without. Why would you think that Maria B. is "?" ? She was a fairly big recruit that red shirted her freshman year then had to sit out most of this season with an injury.
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