From Reddit r/volleyball
Karch Kiraly, Will he Wake up from his Dream? I hope Not!
In a most somnambulist manner Coach Kiraly has stumbled upon his best starting 7 in a fashion that goes against everything he has done before. He grabbed Kelsey Robinson from her OH position and inserted her mid game for a struggling JWO. Previously Kim Hill only got that kind of treatment. Then when the Hill/MBH combination didn’t click and he got better success from Larson/MBH he benched Hill, his 2014 WC gold MVP.
But when his Murphy, MBH, and Larson combo struggled in the gold medal VNL match against Turkey he moved MBH to OP and brought back Hill to join with Larson and that team pulled out the match in impressive closing fashion.
With the big summer friendly being a four match week in Brazil will Karch play coy and go back to trying different Hill/Larson/MBH combinations using his traditional lefty Opposites? Or will he go all in with MBH at OP and then try to quickly burn-in a new third OH.
Madi Kingdon has the inside track. She played well last year on the B-team but couldn’t quite grab a spot on the A-team. Sarah Wilhite was just given a long look at #3 but just didn’t grab the opportunity. The dark horse here is Megan Courtney and whether she has recovered enough from her ACL tear to compete this year.
In 2015, the wake Karch, got caught up in experimenting with his players and never could quite settle on his group and in doing so lost the magic from the 2014 WC gold medal. This fed right into his last-minute decisions on who would go to Rio and a frustrating Bronze medal.
Hopefully now we have a sleeping/woke coach who has slipped on the Ring and will let it guide him to another WC gold.