2014 USA NCAA Division 1 Championship for Women

Horizon League Poll from August 27

1. Milwaukee
2. Valparaiso (Valpo)
3. Oakland
4. Cleveland State
5. Green Bay
6. University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC)
7. Youngstown State
8. Wright State

Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) Poll from August 27

East Division
1. Alabama State
2. Alabama A&M
3. Jackson State
4. Mississippi Valley State
5. Alcorn State

West Division
1. Texas Southern
2. Prairie View A&M
3. Southern
4. Arkansas-Pine Bluff (UAPB)
5. Grambling

The Ivy League is the only conference who has not announced their pre-season poll.

New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) is the only independent school in NCAA Division 1 women's volleyball.

The Out-of-Conference Tournaments 4 team tournaments begin tomorrow.

Penn State vs. Stanford will be broadcast on Pac-12 Network at 6 pm Pacific Daylight Time.

The game will be streamed on the Pac-12 Network website if you have one of the cable providers that has it in the states.

Stanford beats Penn State in 5 sets (18-25, 25-23, 25-22, 16-25, 15-10)
UCLA upsets Illinois (really strange to see that in a sentence in volleyball) 3-0 (25-17, 25-22, 25-22)
UCLA was not ranked and lost to Loyola Marymount in a tournament last week. Karsta Lowe with 29 kills for the Bruins
Washington beats BYU in 5 sets (25-18, 22-25, 25-21, 21-25, 15-10)
PAC-12 as a whole is getting some big out of conference wins, helps with seeding and getting into the tournament later in the year

I watched Southern California beat Kentucky in 3 sets last night in a non air conditioned arena (4 big fans only in a 5,000 seat arena with it about 25% full). Lots of floor mopping in this match.
Samantha Bricio of USC (Mexico) goes out and gets 13 kills, 3 aces and leads all scores while making it look so easy.

After seeing Southern California, Kentucky, Creighton and Northern Iowa in the Commonwealth Classic (all of these tournaments have names, Invitational, Classic, etc.) a few notes

USC is very strong and was expected. They did have some difficulty against Northern Iowa who they swept, but it was a close match
Kentucky is a good squad, but a little below USC. Probably should have lost to Creighton.
Creighton was playing without one of their setters due to a death in the family. Creighton played well at times, but had to grind through 5 sets against Northern Iowa. Took a set from USC, but got very little production from the outside hitters. Against Kentucky it was basically an even match, but killed themselves with 12 hitting errors in the 3rd set to lose in straight sets.
Northern Iowa seemed to keep the ball in play forever against USC and Creighton. I did not seem play against Kentucky because some of us have to work a half day.

Each of these teams in this tournament were picked to win or finish second in their conferences, so it was a very good tournament for me to attend.

The new polls will be out today, but Stanford should be #1 with wins over Penn State and Illinois.

Here it is AVCA Poll from September 8, 2014

There will be some big change in the rankings this coming week

Southern Cal with 2 loses to Texas A&M and Florida.
Purdue losing to Western Kentucky

Klineman, I have not seen anything about an injury.

Lowe is putting some ridiculous numbers up. Let's see how those do in conference. I think that they will go down.

AVCA Poll for September 15, 2014

Number of Teams By Conference
Pac-12 7
Big TEN 7
Southeastern Conference (SEC) 3
West Coast Conference (WCC) 3
Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) 2
Big XII (Twelve) 2
Mountain West 1

Quote from joanamss

I asked cause she only appeared in their roster in their last match...she was not even among the available players before...

About Lowe...I just saw the numbers indeed...time will tell better about her performances I guess.

These numbers are even better than her numbers last year, which were still pretty high.

Bio/Stats

AVCA Poll for September 29, 2014

Southern California Trojans lost two matches and dropped way down in the ranking. It is really weird seeing them at 0-2 in the Pac-12 Conference and tied for last.

Number of Teams by Conference in the Top 25
Pac-12 7
Big TEN 6
Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) 3
Southeastern Conference (SEC) 3
West Coast Conference (WCC) 3
Big XII (Twelve) 1
Big West 1
Mountain West 1

Individual Stats Leaders for all of NCAA (from NCAA.com website)
Kills per Set
Karsta Lowe, UCLA, 6.49 kills per set
Just ridiculous numbers or do she gets all the sets for UCLA?
Vendula Stratkova, Hampton, 5.69

Blocks per Set (block solos + block assists)
Arica Nassar, Oregon State, 1.73
Lianna Sybeldon, Washington 1.72
A very tight battle with the top 5 all within 0.04 blocks
BYU has 2 players tied for 4th at 1.69, so that's the reason they are winning?

Aces per Set
Micha Hancock, Penn State, 1.10
Samantha Bricio, Southern California, 0.89
Normally players with lots of aces have lots of service errors. Not for these ladies, they have more aces than errors.

Digs per Set
Payton Harris, Mississippi State, 6.90
Markie Schaedig, Arkansas State, 6.04

Assists per Set (Sets for Kill)
Paige Brown, Appalachian State, 12.25
Julie Consani, UCLA, 12.18
So half of Consani assists are to Lowe?

Points per Set (Kills + Blocks + Aces)
Karsta Lowe, UCLA, 7.19 per set
Vendula Stratkova, Hampton, 6.30
Madison Kingdon, Arizona, 6.10
No other players are above 5.70 points

Hitting Percentage
Merete Lutz, Stanford, 0.528
Inky Ajanuku, Stanford, 0.510
Any reason why Stanford is ranked #1, you can't stop the middle against them.

TEAM STATS
Kills per Set
UCLA, 15.73
Wisconsin, 15.10

Blocks per Set (block solos + block assists)
BYU, 3.76
Texas, 3.19

Aces per Set
Santa Clara and Marist, 2.06

Digs per Set
Northwestern State, 19.20
Nicholls State, 18.36

Assists per Set (Sets for Kill)
UCLA, 14.65
Pittsburgh, 14.27

Hitting Percentage
Penn State, 0.372
Washington, 0.348

Quote from vbv

How will the winner of BIG 10 be decided? The teams don't have the same schedule, for example PSU has to play Nebraska twice while Wisconsin only has to play them once.

First is by win-loss record within the conference. It is the same for all conferences.

Then head-to-head record, then sets won-lost (if tied 1-1).

UCLA almost took down Washington, but could not hold a 2-0 set lead and lost to the Huskies in 5.

Stanford took down Oregon 3-1. Ducks could not pass well which was their undoing.