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Post by redbeard2008 on Nov 19, 2019 14:04:48 GMT -5
One other possibility to throw into the hat would be converting Crenshaw to Libero. Cook did it before with Scambray. Similar to then, I would hate to lose the front-row potential that she demonstrated increasingly while Hoffman was out. She does have a really good back-row game (except for reasonable freshman inconsistency). That's at least a possibility, if no one else steps up. 6'2" liberos are a rarity, however. She has been mostly playing as a DS, but has shown herself to be very capable of stepping up to the frontrow, if Hoffman is having an off match. We are going to need a Libero and a DS (thankfully, Onosko has stepped up this season). Right now, that looks to be Houghton and Calle, who've mostly been used as serving subs. We haven't seen what they're doing in practice, however. UW does have one scholarship available, maybe two. With the transfer portal, it is best to keep your powder dry.
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Post by redbeard2008 on Nov 20, 2019 0:15:24 GMT -5
In case you missed it, Set 5 from the Utah @ UW match:
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Post by ay2013 on Nov 20, 2019 0:35:09 GMT -5
With, IMO, disastrous results. I bet he won't be so eager to do that again. It all depends on how things stack up next year, but they need one or two six-rotation hitters. Taking a 6r hitter and converting her to libero is a net loss unless the replacement hitter is better and the replacement libero is not better. I thought before it happened, while it happened, and after it happened that this was a severe over-reaction to McPherson being a freshman and struggling like a freshman. I think the past few seasons has shown this interpretation to be correct. Even in that season, when injuries forced him to use Scambray as a hitter and McPerson as the libero I thought the actual team play improved. I don't know why he was so committed to the idea. He took a team that got to the elite 8 and graduated absolutely no one* and turned them into a team that didn't get out of the second round. Yes, there were other factors at play than just this lineup meddling, but still.... *Sorry, they did graduate one player. A lightly-used middle who only played with the team that one year because she was a graduate transfer. At this point, Crenshaw would appear to be the most qualified replacement for McPherson. I'd rather have her available for the front row and as a backrow serving/defensive player, who could also hit out of the back row. But if the choice is an athletic Crenshaw at libero who continues to improve in serve receive, or a lesser skilled player at libero, Cook would be sorely tempted to make the switch. This is a big part of the reason why we need a good transfer L. Now Mike knows that reasonable minds differ regarding the Scambray experiment. I continue to believe it was a good and worthwhile experiment. Scambray was a good, not great, libero, who would have been better had she not been re-converted to OH in the middle of the 2017 season when Tanner went down with an injury. With the variety of front row players the Huskies had that year, they should have been able to make it work better than it did. I'm going to quote part of my post-mortem on the 2017 season and just leave it at that, as I am not eager to get in an extended discussion of what went wrong in 2017: "In retrospect, perhaps the biggest mistake Cook and Co. made was to keep Bajema on the bench for so long. When Tanner went down, Cook should have reinserted Bajema into the starting lineup rather than switch Scambray back to OH. Actually, Bajema should have been in the starting lineup well before that. Cook's explanation was that she had been given the chance early in the season but did not seize the day. I'm not really buying that since Kara always had among the highest kills per set of any UW player, if not the highest, even based on her limited early season action. Cook's decision to move Scambray back to OH effectively retarded Scambray's development as a libero, hurt UW's overall D, and meant that Bajema (and Julye) did not get important reps in the middle of the season that presumably would have paid off both at the time and later in terms of team chemistry." Bajema came on strong at the end of the 2017 season, showing the potential she is fulfilling in spades right now. In retrospect, the biggest mistake was not red shirting Bajema in 2017. Should she want to stay in 2020, we could really use her. We didn't need her in 2017.
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Post by alwayslearning on Nov 20, 2019 1:20:02 GMT -5
At this point, Crenshaw would appear to be the most qualified replacement for McPherson. I'd rather have her available for the front row and as a backrow serving/defensive player, who could also hit out of the back row. But if the choice is an athletic Crenshaw at libero who continues to improve in serve receive, or a lesser skilled player at libero, Cook would be sorely tempted to make the switch. This is a big part of the reason why we need a good transfer L. Now Mike knows that reasonable minds differ regarding the Scambray experiment. I continue to believe it was a good and worthwhile experiment. Scambray was a good, not great, libero, who would have been better had she not been re-converted to OH in the middle of the 2017 season when Tanner went down with an injury. With the variety of front row players the Huskies had that year, they should have been able to make it work better than it did. I'm going to quote part of my post-mortem on the 2017 season and just leave it at that, as I am not eager to get in an extended discussion of what went wrong in 2017: "In retrospect, perhaps the biggest mistake Cook and Co. made was to keep Bajema on the bench for so long. When Tanner went down, Cook should have reinserted Bajema into the starting lineup rather than switch Scambray back to OH. Actually, Bajema should have been in the starting lineup well before that. Cook's explanation was that she had been given the chance early in the season but did not seize the day. I'm not really buying that since Kara always had among the highest kills per set of any UW player, if not the highest, even based on her limited early season action. Cook's decision to move Scambray back to OH effectively retarded Scambray's development as a libero, hurt UW's overall D, and meant that Bajema (and Julye) did not get important reps in the middle of the season that presumably would have paid off both at the time and later in terms of team chemistry." Bajema came on strong at the end of the 2017 season, showing the potential she is fulfilling in spades right now. In retrospect, the biggest mistake was not red shirting Bajema in 2017. Should she want to stay in 2020, we could really use her. We didn't need her in 2017. Well, that's one perspective. But you can really only say "we didn't need her in 2017" if you were writing off the 2017 season. We actually needed her playing much earlier than Cook did play her that year. Had he done so, IMO the Huskies would have done better in the league and would not have had the early exit from the tournament.
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Post by ay2013 on Nov 20, 2019 2:06:15 GMT -5
In retrospect, the biggest mistake was not red shirting Bajema in 2017. Should she want to stay in 2020, we could really use her. We didn't need her in 2017. Well, that's one perspective. But you can really only say "we didn't need her in 2017" if you were writing off the 2017 season. We actually needed her playing much earlier than Cook did play her that year. Had he done so, IMO the Huskies would have done better in the league and would not have had the early exit from the tournament. Well..... one would naturally assume that a team that had 6 returning top 20 recruits and a transfer all american MB wouldn't NEED Bajema to not be 25-8 with a second NCAA exit at home, but that's a different story all together. Separately, Bajema had 26 kills in that match against Illinois (lead the team) and 3rd in digs....other than the blocking (not that Schwan did any better on the pin) what else could Bajema have done to win us that match? answer, nothing. Also, the only losses in conference that the huskies really should not have taken was to Oregon State....TWICE. We shouldn't be losing those matches, Bajema or no Bajema, period.
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Post by redbeard2008 on Nov 20, 2019 3:38:31 GMT -5
At this point, Crenshaw would appear to be the most qualified replacement for McPherson. I'd rather have her available for the front row and as a backrow serving/defensive player, who could also hit out of the back row. But if the choice is an athletic Crenshaw at libero who continues to improve in serve receive, or a lesser skilled player at libero, Cook would be sorely tempted to make the switch. This is a big part of the reason why we need a good transfer L. Now Mike knows that reasonable minds differ regarding the Scambray experiment. I continue to believe it was a good and worthwhile experiment. Scambray was a good, not great, libero, who would have been better had she not been re-converted to OH in the middle of the 2017 season when Tanner went down with an injury. With the variety of front row players the Huskies had that year, they should have been able to make it work better than it did. I'm going to quote part of my post-mortem on the 2017 season and just leave it at that, as I am not eager to get in an extended discussion of what went wrong in 2017: "In retrospect, perhaps the biggest mistake Cook and Co. made was to keep Bajema on the bench for so long. When Tanner went down, Cook should have reinserted Bajema into the starting lineup rather than switch Scambray back to OH. Actually, Bajema should have been in the starting lineup well before that. Cook's explanation was that she had been given the chance early in the season but did not seize the day. I'm not really buying that since Kara always had among the highest kills per set of any UW player, if not the highest, even based on her limited early season action. Cook's decision to move Scambray back to OH effectively retarded Scambray's development as a libero, hurt UW's overall D, and meant that Bajema (and Julye) did not get important reps in the middle of the season that presumably would have paid off both at the time and later in terms of team chemistry." Bajema came on strong at the end of the 2017 season, showing the potential she is fulfilling in spades right now. In retrospect, the biggest mistake was not red shirting Bajema in 2017. Should she want to stay in 2020, we could really use her. We didn't need her in 2017. Well, Cook should have either redshirted or started her, rather than sitting her for most of the season. I mark that down to Cook's inexperience as a head coach. Alternatively, he could have redshirted her in 2016 (with Jones playing middle)
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Post by alwayslearning on Nov 20, 2019 12:11:46 GMT -5
I agree that the real problem was that Bajema was sitting for most of the season. You can argue that Cook should have assumed that the rest of the team was "good enough" to warrant a Bajema redshirt, but the vast majority of coaches are not going to redshirt a player who could contribute right now, especially if players become injured -- as they did. The fact that Bajema was our best offensive option at the very end of the season isn't an argument that we could not have done better -- it's an argument that the team, as a whole, would have been better with Bajema starting the WHOLE season, and without the unproductive and disruptive switching of Scambray back and forth from L to OH and back. The team was just starting to come together the last few weeks of the season. It should have happened earlier and the team would have been a better, more dangerous team in the tournament. The primary reason it did not, IMO, is that Bajema was warming the bench. That's my 2 cents worth.
It's all water under the bridge at this point. I'd rather focus on the rest of this year and how Cook goes about solving challenges for next year.
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Post by redbeard2008 on Nov 20, 2019 22:27:02 GMT -5
On match point UW puts up an impenetrable wall:
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Post by redbeard2008 on Nov 21, 2019 21:49:52 GMT -5
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Post by redbeard2008 on Nov 23, 2019 2:29:09 GMT -5
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Post by redbeard2008 on Nov 26, 2019 2:41:12 GMT -5
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Post by mikegarrison on Nov 26, 2019 3:14:47 GMT -5
Wait, so the UW went to Spain (virtually, I assume) and registered gohski.es as a domain name just so that they could *almost* spell out "gohuskies" in their links?
(They were beat to "gohuski.es" by some Canadaian photog who redirects that to "getmyphoto.ca". They sell photos of the University of Saskatchewan teams who are also called the Huskies.)
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Post by redbeard2008 on Nov 26, 2019 12:04:28 GMT -5
Wait, so the UW went to Spain (virtually, I assume) and registered gohski.es as a domain name just so that they could *almost* spell out "gohuskies" in their links? (They were beat to "gohuski.es" by some Canadaian photog who redirects that to "getmyphoto.ca". They sell photos of the University of Saskatchewan teams who are also called the Huskies.) www.lifewire.com/best-url-shortener-3288867
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Post by redbeard2008 on Dec 10, 2019 12:54:04 GMT -5
Ella May Powell also named All Pacific North Region. Samantha Drechsel and Lauren Sanders named Honorable Mention. Dani Drews named Pacific South Region Player of the Year.
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Post by ay2013 on Dec 10, 2019 13:27:46 GMT -5
Ella May Powell also named All Pacific North Region. Samantha Drechsel and Lauren Sanders named Honorable Mention. Dani Drews named Pacific South Region Player of the Year. Congrats ladies!!!!! Too bad Dreschel couldn’t keep her numbers up. She was primed for inclusion on these main lists.
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