Northwestern Wildcats2023 Record: 15-15
Conference Record: 9-11 (T-8th)
NCAA Tournament Placement: N/A
Final AVCA Ranking: NR
Head Coach: Tim Nollan (1st year at Northwestern)
Record at Northwestern: 0-0
| Returning Starters | Departures
* - 2023 Starter
() - Transfer Destination | New Additions
() - Transfer Origin |
Kennedy Hill - JR - 6'1 MB
Gigi Navarrete - SO - 5'6 DS/L
Alexa Rousseau - SR+ - 6'3 S
Drew Wright - SO - 5'11 OH/DS | Maddy Chinn* - 6'3 OH/RS
Natalie Chizzo - SR+ - 6'3 OH (UIC)
Leilani Dodson* - SR+ - 6'1 MB (UCLA)
Averie Hernandez* - JR - 6'2 OH (Illinois)
Ellie Husemann - 6'3 MB
Julia Sangiacomo* - 6'5 OH
Ellee Stinson* - SR - 5'2 DS/L (Texas A&M) | Sara Griffith - SR+ - 6'1 MB (DePaul)
Cleo Hardin - FR - 6'3 OH
Buse Hazan - JR - 5'11 OH (South Florida)
Rachel Johnson - JR - 6'0 OH (Holy Cross)
Ava Pratt - FR - 6'2 OH
Sophia Summers - SR+ - 6'3 MB (Washington)
Lily Wagner - SO - 5'11 OH (Liberty) |
2022 was the year that could have been for Northwestern. The Wildcats appeared to be steamrolling toward a historic NCAA Tournament appearance, but a combination of close calls and devastating injuries led to a late-season collapse and a missed opportunity.
That missed opportunity was the backdrop for a 2023 Northwestern team with several new faces. The year started with back-to-back losses to Hawai'i and Oregon in Honolulu. Northwestern notched its first win in the Week 1 finale against San Diego.
Week 2 revealed the duality of Northwestern yet again. The Wildcats took care of Illinois State but suffered an unsightly road loss to Milwaukee out of the Horizon League. Not great.
Three sweeps over Northern Colorado, Northeastern, and Fairfield pulled Northwestern above 0.500. However, the Horizon League bested the Wildcats again as Illinois-Chicago triumphed over its crosstown rival. Again, not great.
The first weekend of conference play featured less-than-ideal matchups for Northwestern. Wisconsin and Penn State quickly tallied straight-set wins in Welsh-Ryan Arena. Michigan State got a road win, too.
Northwestern finally earned a conference win in one of the strangest ways possible. Purdue trounced its purple-clad visitors for two consecutive sets before the Wildcats put together a wild reverse sweep. Northwestern's first B1G win was also a ranked win.
The next time Northwestern saw the floor, it handed Michigan its first conference win, too. We were witnessing a familiar narrative for the Northwestern program: a team constantly in flux between being fairly solid to really, really bad.
The Wildcats put together a decent stretch with wins over Michigan State and Maryland, accompanied by a five-set road loss to Minnesota. However, the losses soon began to pile up as the Wildcats dropped five of the next seven. At least Northwestern got to ruin Indiana's season.
Northwestern salvaged its season with four wins in its last five contests. Sure, this wasn't against the conference's upper echelon: wins over Rutgers, Illinois, and a season sweep over Iowa. This put Northwestern in a tie for eighth with Michigan State. The NCAA Tournament was never within reach as it had been in 2022.
Head Coach Shane Davis and Northwestern "mutually parted ways" on Dec. 1 after Davis's eighth season with the program. His final record at Northwestern was 103-128 with a 0.300 winning percentage in conference play.
The Wildcats unveiled their new leader in February. Tim Nollan signed with Northwestern after eight seasons at the helm for Grand Canyon University. He compiled a 120-92 overall record with the Lopes and guided GCU to the 2023 Western Athletic Conference title.
2023 Lineup:To Northwestern's credit, the Wildcats had a core lineup it wanted to deploy through most of 2023. That didn't always happen for one reason or another, but the effort was there.
Senior setter Alexa Rousseau was back. The six-foot-three distributor had a long-term injury that put a wrench in Northwestern's 2022 plans, but she was still the team's unquestioned incumbent in 2023. Rousseau ran Northwestern's quick, often hot-and-cold offense and was frequently an attacking threat on the second contact. She finished with triple-digit kills for the second time in her career.
Junior defensive specialist Ellee Stinson slid into the libero jersey after the graduation of veteran Megan Miller. Stinson saw backcourt action as soon as she arrived at Northwestern in 2021. Her insertion into the libero role was widely expected, and Stinson finished second among Big Ten players in digs per set behind Purdue's Maddie Schermerhorn.
The starting middle blockers were both returning commodities. Leilani Dodson retained the M1 spot after transferring in for the 2021 season. Her slide attack was by far the most effective on the Northwestern roster, and she paced all Wildcat attackers with 0.340 clip in 2023. Dodson even finished second in the team's final kill tally and usually stayed on to serve. She did a lot.
Kennedy Hill locked down the M2 spot for almost the entire 2023 season. She played in only 11 sets as a freshman but was the top choice over Minnesota graduate transfer Ellie Husemann. Hill hit 0.314 on the year and nearly matched Dodson's block total, but she did not receive nearly as much offensive volume. It's the life of an M2.
On to the newbies. For most of the season, Northwestern's opposite was Purdue graduate transfer Maddy Chinn. The fifth-year player made the Indiana-to-Illinois swap and posted a career-high 198 kills on the year. That can mostly be attributed to seeing more floor time and being out of the revolving door that characterized her Boilermaker career. Chinn only hit 0.185 in her final collegiate season.
The Wildcats wielded their most important new addition at L2: Santa Clara graduate transfer Julia Sangiacomo. The six-foot-five outside hitter put up huge numbers throughout her career with the Broncos, and she brought the same energy in her one-off season in Evanston. Sangiacomo easily led the team in kills despite missing five matches and not playing in the front row in a sixth. She effectively defeated Purdue by herself.
Sophomore Averie Hernandez was the leading option at the other outside hitter position. Northwestern had to shuffle the deck during Sangiacomo's absences, which sometimes entailed moving Chinn to the left and putting returning sophomore Kathryn Randorf on the right.
The two notable defensive specialists behind Stinson were both freshmen. Local recruit Gigi Navarrete came in for the L1 and played in all of Northwestern's matches. Drew Wright, listed as an outside hitter, was also a wire-to-wire backcourt contributor and subbed in for the opposite.
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2024 Projected Lineup:Take everything you know about the 2023 team and discard most of it.
We might as well start with who's still here. Rousseau decided to take her fifth year with the Wildcats and will presumably set the offense again. Northwestern would love for her to return to her 2022 pre-injury form when she was facilitating the offense well.
Navarrete is listed as the only defensive specialist on the 2024 roster. Seriously, look at it. Stinson is off to Texas A&M. We'll take the liberty of slotting Navarrete into the contrasting jersey by default, and she at least got plenty of reps as a freshman. Keep in mind that Wright carried her DS role despite carrying an outside hitter designation. She has to get more time in the backcourt. Northwestern doesn't have anyone else.
Does Hill move to the M1 spot as the returning veteran? Northwestern doesn't have much depth at the position, either. Two portal additions are in the picture, and one of them was just announced a few days ago. The leading candidate to start alongside Hill seems to be Washington graduate transfer Sophia Summers. Summers has been a far better blocker than a terminator, which could support a move to M1 for Hill. The other middle blocker is Sara Griffith, who was officially announced as a Wildcat right before fall camp. We don't have a big sample size to work from after Griffith's prior stops at DePaul and South Florida.
We're now left to sort through the nine players listed as outside hitters on Northwestern's roster. That's a lot. All three of last year's primary pins are gone. The longest-tenured Wildcat here is Randorf, who could conceivably play on either side of the setter. Junior Rylen Reid played sparingly last year but hit negative.
So, we're left to wade through a sea of freshmen and transfers. Wright could defy everyone and play in the front row, but we'll see. Keep tabs on Buse Hazan, the Turkish junior who put up a first-team all-AAC performance with South Florida last year. She put down about four kills per set last year but was up and down in the efficiency column. Another junior, Rachel Johnson, joins the Wildcats from Holy Cross. She hit 0.134 with the Patriot League squad in 2023. We also have second-year outside hitter Lily Wagner, who played sparingly with Liberty University.
The freshmen are Ava Pratt and Cleo Hardin. Get ready to see any combination of these names. Or all of them in different places at different times. It's a lot to take in.
2024 Schedule:The Tim Nollan era starts on the road with matches against UNLV and Pacific. Any predictions are valid for this one. Northwestern could feasibly lose both or win both. Or, you know, the other possible outcomes.
The Wildcats then double dip with Long Beach State on the road. It's a battle of first-year head coaches. Northwestern will not be favored.
Welsh-Ryan's grand opening finally arrives in a Sept. 12 bout with Notre Dame. This will be tough, and Northwestern reciprocates with a trip to South Bend two days later.
Northwestern wraps up with another home-and-home series with Northern Illinois. All these double-stacked matches mean the Wildcats only play five unique opponents before conference play. That's weird.
Super weird:
2024 Outlook:We're one year removed from Michigan posting a 7-22 record under a first-year head coach. Northwestern will likely see a similar fate in 2024.
The extent of Northwestern's roster turnover is unsurprising, but it's still jarring. All three of the pins will be new, but at least the Wildcats have a lot to choose from. I just don't know who will be where and how it all translates to Big Ten play.
Rousseau is Northwestern's best asset at the setter spot. She has the unenviable task of tying together a large group of transfers and a small group of backcourt players into something mildly competitive. That's an extraordinary burden.
Northwestern was picked to finish 16th in the conference, just ahead of Rutgers and Iowa. It's hard to see many opportunities to climb higher than that. The rebuild begins.
