Just over halfway through the spring season (BYU has eight matches left on the schedule after playing nine--I have no idea if the Santa Clara matches will be made up), I thought I'd take a look at the team's stats to date.
Based on what's happened so far, it seems that Heather Olmstead has settled on the following lineup for the time being:
OH1: Taylen Ballard-Nixon
OH2: Erin Livingston
MB1: Kennedy Eschenberg
MB2: Leilani Dodson
OPP: Kate Grimmer
S: Whitney Bower
L: Madi Allen
DS: Grace Wee
DS: Abbey Dayton
SS: Taylor Hifo
With the exception of Eschenberg and Livingston, all of these players have played in every set this season. Eschenberg missed some matches with a knee injury, and Livingston wasn't playing at the beginning of the season. I'll take a look at each player and how they compared to last year's team. Obviously, some caveats apply in that there are almost zero non-conference matches this season, but I think it's still worth looking at.
At OH1, Ballard-Nixon is averaging 3.68 k/s on .222 hitting compared to McKenna Miller averaging 3.58 k/s on .293 hitting. Ballard-Nixon is not as efficient as I'd like for an OH1, but she also plays six rotations (2.10 d/s). She is a credible threat in the back row, which was almost entirely absent last year. Ballard-Nixon has also quietly been one of the better servers on the team, with 12 aces against 19 errors, though Miller was better (43 aces and 48 errors).
At OH2, Livingston has been the most pleasant surprise of the freshmen. She was the only player who played well in both matches against Pepperdine, and she is averaging 2.70 k/s on .269 hitting. This compares very favorably with Madi Robinson, who averaged 2.49 k/s on .206 hitting. I really like what I've seen out of Livingston this season. She hits the ball hard and has pretty good shot selection. I imagine she has this job won.
At MB1, Eschenberg has been the steady senior leader and one of the best players, averaging 2.35 k/s on .386 hitting and 1.10 b/s. This compares well to Heather Gneiting's 2.02 k/s on .303 hitting and 1.23 b/s (to be fair to Gneiting, she went from LHE to 17-year-old Bower at setter).
At MB2, Dodson has been playing the position ever since injuries to Eschenberg and Allie Hakes. Her stats don't translate quite as easily, since she has some time at OH2, but she's averaging 1.94 k/s on .227 hitting and .77 b/s. This matches up unfavorably to Eschenberg in 2019, who averaged 1.74 k/s on .353 hitting and 1.20 b/s. Dodson has had some big matches this year and has a lot of potential, so I think Olmstead will stick with the true freshman.
At OPP, Grimmer has been another pleasant surprise. She was somewhat effective last season, averaging 1.68 k/s on .227 hitting. This season, Grimmer has improved those numbers to 3.16 k/s on .339 hitting, and she is now the most dangerous pin hitter on the team. She could always hit the ball hard, but this season, it seems that she's much smarter with her shot selection, and she is doing a much better job of tooling the block.
For the back-row players, I don't have access to the VolleyMetrics passing data (hopefully, I'll get it later, and I'll update when I do), though I would suspect that Wee is a better passer than she was last season, and I can't imagine that Allen is as good a passer as Mary Lake was (2.37), which says more about Lake than anything else. At any rate, Allen is averaging 4.42 d/s, which is more than Lake's 3.61 d/s, but that's more of a testament to Lake being a "shutdown corner," as teams avoided her. By way of comparison, Lake averaged 4.59 d/s when she was a freshman. Allen is also averaging 1.65 a/s, which is an improvement on Lake's average of 1.24 a/s in 2019. As for Wee, she has improved from 1.18 d/s in 2019 to 1.61 d/s this season.
Dayton is listed as an outside hitter, but she was been used exclusively in a defensive role the last two seasons, so she's effectively a DS. Last season, she averaged 1.15 d/s, and she has improved that mark to 1.68 d/s this season. She's also far less error-prone while serving. Hifo has been one of the team's best servers, with 13 aces against 15 errors. Last season, she had 15 errors and 22 errors. She's also a good defensive player in her rotation.
Finally, there's the setter Bower, who is probably the most improved player on the team overall. Last season, Bower averaged .78 k/s on .390 hitting with 9.55 a/s and 2.48 d/s. She also had 40 aces (.36/s) against 42 errors, which made her one of the two best servers (along with Miller, who had similar stats) on the team. This season, she's improved those numbers to 1.10 k/s on .476 hitting with 10.39 a/s and 3.58 d/s. She's also easily the best server on the team in terms of aces to errors, as she has 14 aces (.45/s) and just 7 errors so far this season. The team's hitting percentage has also improved from .273 to .287. She is a bit of a liability blocking (actually a bit down from last season), but she brings so much else to the table that it's worth it.
Edit: So I got some of the VolleyMetrics passing numbers (thanks, bwf2), and this is why it's better to have stats than to rely on the "eye test." According to the numbers, Wee and Dayton are about the same or a bit worse than last season. Ballard has improved from last year, but her numbers still aren't great. Allen is the best passer on the team, but she's not the passer that Mary Lake was. In light of these numbers, this makes Bower's setting look even better. It has also been brought to my attention that passing in general is down during the spring, so maybe the numbers aren't quite as bad as they look in a vacuum.
