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Post by jgoodson on Dec 6, 2019 21:34:16 GMT -5
I enjoyed watching the seniors play and appreciate their time at Illinois. They gave it their best shot tonight. It would have been nice to see the group that played tonight healthy enough to play all year. Sometimes things don’t work out that way. All teams but one end the season on a loss. They can go out with their heads held high. I hope their time at Illinois serves as a springboard to happy, successful, and productive lives.
Jacqueline Quade’s Bics
Beth Prince with the winner against Wisconsin in the Regional final last year.
Ashlyn Fleming crushing it from the middle (and on the outside).
Caroline Welsh’s diving saves, particularly the one at Wisconsin last year
And the Final Four.
They made their mark and will be missed.
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Post by exit237a on Dec 7, 2019 13:02:08 GMT -5
Congratulations to Jacqueline on an awesome collegiate indoor volleyball career! I've only followed the Illini these past two seasons, but it's been so much fun to watch her play and we're lucky to have had her on the orange and blue. Best of luck in your future endeavors, including your upcoming season playing beach for UCLA!
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Post by notpriddy (COIF) on Dec 7, 2019 14:41:26 GMT -5
Congratulations to Jacqueline on an awesome collegiate indoor volleyball career! I've only followed the Illini these past two seasons, but it's been so much fun to watch her play and we're lucky to have had her on the orange and blue. Best of luck in your future endeavors, including your upcoming season playing beach for UCLA! Jackie is all class, all of the time. How much she has improved over her four years at Illinois is not only a testament to the good coaching she received, but also to her hard work and determination. Her fine character was on display every time she played a match for Illinois. Always all in for the team, and never disparaging of her teammates. If Jackie ever showed any disapproval or disappointment it was with herself, not her teammates. Thanks for the wonderful memories, and best wishes for a bright future ahead!
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Post by notpriddy (COIF) on Dec 7, 2019 14:42:05 GMT -5
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Post by vball778 on Dec 7, 2019 15:06:19 GMT -5
Super proud of the way they fought last night. I think they were swinging more aggressively than they had all season. It was a glimpse of what the could have been, had Prince been healthy all season. Still a few frustrating aspects of our play (our serve receive), but if were the seniors, I'd be proud of our performance last night and have no regrets.
Next year should be super interesting. My biggest question mark is what they will do with Allison. Does a #7 overall recruit stay and continue to not play the position she was recruited for? Do we try a 6-2? Does Cooney become our go-to hitter? What bench players step up? Bruna? Holzmon? Could be a very similar year next year, with even more pieces to configure. I just hope we do it sooner rather than in the first match of the NCAA tournament.
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Post by vball778 on Dec 7, 2019 15:10:15 GMT -5
Congratulations to Jacqueline on an awesome collegiate indoor volleyball career! I've only followed the Illini these past two seasons, but it's been so much fun to watch her play and we're lucky to have had her on the orange and blue. Best of luck in your future endeavors, including your upcoming season playing beach for UCLA! Jackie is all class, all of the time. How much she has improved over her four years at Illinois is not only a testament to the good coaching she received, but also to her hard work and determination. Her fine character was on display every time she played a match for Illinois. Always all in for the team, and never disparaging of her teammates. If Jackie ever showed any disapproval or disappointment it was with herself, not her teammates. Thanks for the wonderful memories, and best wishes for a bright future ahead! The growth displayed from this one blows my mind. I remember watching her during her freshman year, (I believe the year that they missed the NCAA tournament) and she was asked to carry a huge load as a freshman after Jocelyn Birks (Illinois' All-Time Kills Leader) graduated, when she may not have been ready for that responsibility. The poor girl could not handle the pressure and looked as if she would break down into tears every time she made a mistake. It seemed like after Kevin left, she played more freely and truly became a silent killer and leader. It has been so much fun watching her grow, mature, and thrive in the sport. I wish her all the best as she transitions to UCLA Sand VB.
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Post by dunninla3 on Dec 7, 2019 16:18:57 GMT -5
will be glad to have her at UCLA Beach.
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Post by brucks on Dec 7, 2019 22:04:34 GMT -5
Can Buena get a red shirt now?
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Post by alt on Dec 7, 2019 22:25:30 GMT -5
I’m happy at least we put up a fight against Utah. BYU is just getting killed
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Post by vbkahuna on Dec 7, 2019 23:19:42 GMT -5
It was what it was. A very uneven but entrertaining year. It never came together after a very rough stsrt, but there were great highlights. The best of which included spectacular slo-mo of bics by Jacqueline Quade. Too bad Poultert didn't have one more year of eligibility. Their connection was magical, epic.
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Post by notpriddy (COIF) on Dec 8, 2019 13:36:03 GMT -5
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Post by exit237a on Dec 8, 2019 14:40:24 GMT -5
Can Buena get a red shirt now? I'm not sure of the rules. Bruna is listed on the 2019 roster as a red-shirt freshman, so I would guess she's not eligible.
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Post by exit237a on Dec 8, 2019 19:26:42 GMT -5
In a November game thread, someone posed the question of Quade’s season performance, “How is she doing so far?”, and that prompted me to do a dive into her season stats. Using available data from the Illinois and B1G websites, here's a summary of how her 2019 stats compare to 2018 (with all percentages rounded down):
Improvements over last season:
Serving: 53% more service aces/set and 4% fewer service errors/set Defense: 25% fewer receiving errors/set, 14% more digs/set, and 49% more block solos/set Points/set: 1% more points/set
Dropoffs from last season:
Attacking: <1% fewer kills/set, 24% more attack errors/set, and a reduction in hitting % from .265 in 2018 to .214 in 2019 Defense: 12% fewer block assists/set Setting: 58% fewer assists/set
What stands out to me when comparing Quade's stats between 2018 and 2019 is that she improved on every individual statistic (meaning one she's independently responsible for) or statistic which is largely individual, over last season. These include service aces and errors, receiving errors, digs, and solo blocks. Conversely, each statistic where she experienced a dropoff is one that's dependent on teammates. These include kills, attack errors, hitting %, assists, and block assists.
So each stat which was worse this season than it was last season is directly impacted by her teammates- this shouldn't be a surprise since her two exiting regular teammates from 2018 were a 1st team AA setter and 3rd team AA middle who ranks second all-time in career blocks in the B1G. It makes sense that any stat that depends on her setter (notably kills, attack errors, and hitting %) or middle blocker (notably block assists/set) was going to drop off when replacing two senior All-Americans with freshmen. Her reduction in assists/set this season could also be tied to those departures and the huge variability in other hitter personnel in this year's lineup (Prince, Cooney, Allison, Vrankovic, Collins, Hinton, and Swanson all having inconsistent roles and/or limited availability due to injury).
Quade's performance in 2018 earned her 1st Team All-American honors and yet in 2019, she even improved over every aforementioned "individual" metric from 2018. This is with an 8% increase in workload (attacks/set) and to my recollection she didn’t miss a single rotation all season. Despite a slight drop-off in kills/set in 2019 (4.21/set vs. 4.24/set in 2018), she still led the conference with 4.19 kills/set during the regular season.
I'm very much an Illinois homer and Quade fan so it felt necessary to provide a statistical basis for assessing her performance this season, instead of me just saying she's great. The analysis is amateur but the calculations are based on published statistics, so they're there for anyone else to analyze. Here's her season stats from the past two seasons, pulled from the Illini website- any stat listed below which I didn't include above was one that I either don't fully understand (Assist Error, Block Error, and Block Hitting Error?) or felt it was more useful to parse out (Total Blocks).
SP K E TA Pct Ast E SA SE RE Dig BS BA BE TB BHE Pts 2018 132 560 181 1429 .265 32 0 32 68 36 254 3 60 5 63 1 625 2019 118 497 201 1386 .214 12 1 44 58 24 261 4 47 0 51 2 568.5
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Post by dominic on Dec 8, 2019 22:35:32 GMT -5
I think Quade will be more difficult to replace than Poulter was. If you think back to 2018, Poulter-Quade-Bastinelli were GREAT players. Now all 3 are gone. Need others to step up. As someone mentioned earlier in the thread, the key is Mica. For her to not even get in the match vs Utah was ridiculous. She was a #7 rated recruit for a reason.
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Post by jgoodson on Dec 9, 2019 1:27:17 GMT -5
I agree Poulter, Bastianelli and Quade were all great players and all difficult to replace. Poulter and Quade were in all the time and leave big holes in the lineup. I think Poulter is the hardest to replace. In the end though, they are both gone and not coming back so most difficult to replace is a meaningless discussion. The best lineup used this year appeared to be the one used in the Utah match. Beth Prince was not healthy enough to play through most of the year and this resulted in Megan Cooney playing left side. Mica Allison filled in at right and did an excellent job. But I would guess most people that watched Illinois vball this year would say the season would have been much different (better) with a healthy Beth Prince. That’s water under the bridge though and unknowable. I still enjoyed this season. As for Mica, she is obviously a very talented vball player to be able to play both setter and hitter at a high level. I assume rational behavior from Chris Tamas and he was in practice every day, was an accomplished setter himself, and it was in his best interest to pick the best to win the job. And he picked Diana Brown. She had the advantage of a year in the system. Going forward though, “What about Mica” might be an interesting off season Illinois vball soap opera. Plot lines. Will Tamas revisit the setter competition for a 5/1? Will it be a 6/2? Will Mica play six rotations right side (Courtney Thomas route)? And what about six rotations left side? Having Mica on the court all rotations next year to me will be part of the best team solution. How is the open question. In hindsight, it might have been interesting to play Mica on the left and Cooney on the right even though that goes against convention. Cooney seems most comfortable on the right and puts up a big block. And maybe(probably) the best attacker ever at Illinois was Erin Borske, a lefty that played left side. Borske and Allison were/are top level athletes. Not sure what Mica wants out of her vball life. She seems to have a good skill set for beach. If she wants to eventually try that like Jacqueline Quade, maybe playing some at hitter and some at setter would be training that would help her get there. A video of Erin Borske at Illinois Erin Borske in the Record Book. issuu.com/illiniathletics/docs/2015_record_book_complete/124Quote from Russ Rose after Illinois played Penn State (5 sets). “We held Erin to only 44 kills, that’s pretty good” In a match (5 sets) against Minnesota she had 26 digs and 41 kills. She had over 700 kills in her sophomore year. Another video of Erin, now Erin Gray talking about the skills required for a beach player (at 57 seconds in) From the video "I found that I had all the tools to be a beach player. I could play defense, I could set decently, I could attack the ball, I could pass, and for a taller player (she was listed at 6 foot even) having all those tools makes for a really good beach volleyball player."
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