Watched a couple of the Long Beach videos (Stanford and Pepperdine), thought I would toss some thoughts down here.
Nikolov: Looks sick. We all knew he was going to be able to set, block, serve, and hit for days. Been impressed with his leadership, clear the team knows he's on a different talent level. If/when they face adversity, you just hope him, siapanis, and bouchkov are on the same page...
Bouchkov/McRaven: Both are very good college middles, can block, can hit. Definitely a talent gap at the position in NCAA with McHenry, Voss, Torwie leaving, only Thorne remaining as an elite player. Could see Bouchkov join him at the top.
Varga: Looks great at outside, if passing is sketch can always move him back to opposite. Love his serving and hitting.
Siapanis: Interesting player. Obviously really good hitter, very tricky and gets a lot of points he shouldn't. Feels like he's a pretty big liability in the block though (for this caliber of team), and good teams with good opposites will pick on him even more this year I suspect.
Hershtynovich: Promising start to the year, interested to see how he plays. So far so good. If he doesn't work out can always move Varga back and put in Sani or Kandev at OH.
Larson: Freshman libero, stepping into brigg shoes (get it?). Quality recruit but by no means a sure thing at this level, will likely be under a lot of serve pressure as teams look to get Nikolov out of system as much as possible. Feels like the worst case scenario for this team involves Larson just not working out at all and chaos ensuing.
Overall, Beach are probably the best team in the country on paper, and likely by a significant amount when you consider just how good Nikolov is for the league. I could see them sweeping the field away, but could also see them just squeaking into the #1 seed if Hershtynovich/Larson are one tier lower than expected. Don't really see a world where this team isn't playing in the National Championship.
