3 wahines go pro

[roofed!]

USAFAN said:

How much emphasis you people put on the Florida match is laughable. It's starting to sound like how everyone said Cheryl Weaver sucked after the 2001 final where Logan Tom shut her down. I would challenge that there are few people on this board who follow international volleyball as closely as I do or have watched as much international vb as I do. While I do not expect Kim Willoughby to go from college to automatically the best player in the world, I would say I have a pretty good gauge for what kind of players are going to be successful at the international level. Besides read quotes from the best players and coaches from around the nation. Logan Tom, April Ross, Kele Eveland, Jim McGlachlin, Mick Haley, Ogonna Nnamani, etc. and they will tell you how much of a monster Kim Willoughby is. Mick Haley has seen the best in the world in the Olympics, and so has Logan Tom, if I am going to believe anyone's opinion, I'd take theirs. If and when Kim decides to join the national team maybe not for this Olympics, she will be quite a spectacle. Saying that Kim Willoughby isn't the most physical and talented prospect that the United States has is pretty much a joke. If you are going to make your judgement on the Florida match, watch Hawaii play Notre Dame where she hits against 6'3'' and 6'4'', or watch other matches throughout the years.

I am not disputing that Kim W. is a great collegiate player and that she could become one of the stars in the international game as she accumulates more playing experience. But as of this moment, she is still very relatively young and much untested in the international matches, so how she will actually perform especially in early cooker-pressure matches is still up in the air.

So, I would be careful with your statement which is Kim Willoughby definitely wouldn't crumble against international competition, believe that. Definitely wouldn't crumble? You are only piling huge expectations off the bat for her, and we have seen how she could crumble under such pressure in collegiate plays. My point is that while we are fans of the players, we should be more circumspect and not too over-zealous to the point that the players are automatically assumed to be a big thing too in the more competitive international scene.

In any case, I do hope that Kim W. is given the call to OTC in April to compete for a spot on the Olympic team as the US team needs the best players possible.

[Barefoot In Kailua]

roy said:

But I haven't seen Crawford play since she left as a Wahine in 1997. She has 5 years experience playing internationally and training with the national team. I can bet she has gotten a lot better since then, especially since the national team is keeping her around. Willoughby has very little experience in the international game.

So, who is better? I don't know. I haven't seen Crawford play since 1997 and I venture to guess that a lot of people haven't. And while Willoughby is certainly better than Crawford at similar points in their career, I honestly can't say that Willoughby is definately better than Crawford at the present time. For all I know, Crawford may have developed a deadly serve, became more consistent, hits smarter, and all those other good things.

So, I guess my point is that it isn't fair to judge Crawford against Willoughby when the basis for judgement is how they played in college. Of course, if you have seen her, then this whole post is pointless, so I guess you can just ignore it. But I would really like to know how far she has improved since college. ;D

Good point roy.

I've been lucky enough to watch Crawford play a couple of matches with team USA. Her overall skills have improved a lot since her days as a Wahine ( many Hawai'i fans would be surprised). I think Willoughby still has a lot of untapped potential. She already is a dynamic, explosive player who has the ability to be one of the better attackers in the game. She has more room to grow than does Therese but it's a little difficult to make a direct comparison between the two right now. It's far easier to compare how each performed during their Collegiate years.

[kolohe]

So if you have 21 kills, 18 digs and three aces in four games, that's crumbling??? I know the hitting percentage was pretty low for her standards at .121, but Florida's all-everything Aury Cruz hit only .167 against what people have called a non-existant Hawaii block. Jane Colleymore, who I thought had a great match hit .117. That's what good teams do to each other. UH outhit Florida .210 to .209. Not really earth-shattering numbers. So can you all please stop posting about how Kim Willoughby crumbled vs. Florida. It was a great match between two great teams that was won by the slimmest of margins. Nuff said.

[aloha]

well I wish them the best anyway.

[USAFAN]

I agree. Something that you will notice when top teams play each other is that players will still get high kill totals but their hitting percentages will drop. Even if you look at the percentages that Logan Tom hit the last two final fours that she competed in, her percentages weren't that high at all. The top 4 teams in the nation play too good of defense both at the block and backrow for players to be hitting .400. The rallies are longer, the players are better, the match length is longer. All those factors bring down the hitting percentage.
While I realize that Kim Willoughby has had relatively little experience playing at the international level( Junior National Team, A2 team that played in the Pan Am Cup) what I was trying to get across is that Kim Willoughby isn't the crumble type player. Even though she was making errors in the Florida match, she still wanted the ball and still got her kills. 21 kills either way you look at it is still producing. If you have watched Kim Willoughby play every match throughout the past few years, there have been many pressure situations that she has responded remarkably well, watch Georgia Tech for the most recent case.