Nerdly Nebraska.

2023-2024 HuskerGeek Ratings Leaders

Sport School Rating
ViPR D1 Volleyball Wisconsin 1,711.3731

Author: HuskerGeek

My VolleyTalk Top 25 Vote for 08-27-2018

Written By: HuskerGeek

The Preface

We have data now, but we have no context.  That makes a lot of organizing extremely difficult at best and a fool’s errand at worst.  So, I’ve given a lot of thought to some of these teams but very little to others.  Alas, sometimes you just have to throw things at the board and see what sticks.

The List

  1. Stanford
  2. Wisconsin
  3. Minnesota
  4. Texas
  5. BYU
  6. Florida
  7. USC
  8. Russ Rose
  9. Baylor
  10. Nebraska
  11. Illinois
  12. UNI
  13. Creighton
  14. Washington
  15. Pittsburgh
  16. Kentucky
  17. Oregon
  18. Washington State
  19. San Diego
  20. Florida State
  21. Louisville
  22. Michigan
  23. Colorado State
  24. Purdue
  25. Marquette

The Justification

I don’t have much today.  There are simply no connections between the pods in our directional graph.  Some teams did stuff that I thought probably deserved some movement and got moved.  Some teams did very little to prove or disprove my initial assumptions and stayed put. I was in Lincoln at VERT(Longer article to come.) and didn’t see much beyond the four teams that were there.  I spent most of the rest of the weekend traveling to and from Lincoln. The official post on VolleyTalk courtesy of user vbprisoner can be found here.  The AVCA’s vastly inferior poll can be found here.

Nebraska’s Place in the Fray

Tough to tell right now.  The first match for Big Red was pretty different than the clean volleyball we’ve come to expect from the Huskers.  However, with all the new players and the losses sustained by graduation and transfers, it wasn’t a totally unexpected start.  Statistically, it wasn’t even that different from Nebraska’s appearance in the VERT Challenge in 2017.  Obviously, I’m not expecting this team to win a National Championship.  That is an unfair expectation at any time, and doubly unfair when half of the team is new to the program.  It does; however, illustrate the incredible transition a team can make from opening day to tournament time.

That’s why they play the games.  That’s why we watch the games.

 

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ViPR Stat Lines of Week 2

Written By: HuskerGeek

The second week of volleyball season is in the books and this is who lit up the ViPR Win Probability Added sheet.

All-Around Division 1

Heather Hook of UNI takes the crown for the highest base score for WPA.  She scored an impressive 2.2865 in UNI’s four set victory over USC.  Getting the job done all over the court with 50 assists, 8 kills on 16 swings, 10 digs, 4 block assists and a service ace.  I suspect a partridge in a pear tree may have been watching that performance.  It was a performance which also takes the award for the highest accumulated score per set.

Southern California vs. UNI (2017-09-01)

Top Performances

Heather Hook

UNI


Game WPA

2.2891

Offense: 1.5968

Defense: 0.6923

Attacking: 0.7468
Setting:0.7799
Serving:0.0701
Blocking:0.2454
Digging:0.4469

Karlie Taylor

UNI


Game WPA

1.4982

Offense: 0.9312

Defense: 0.5670

Attacking: 1.0424
Setting:0.0000
Serving:-0.1112
Blocking:0.0307
Digging:0.5363

Khalia Lanier

Southern California


Game WPA

1.3308

Offense: 1.0032

Defense: 0.3277

Attacking: 0.9608
Setting:0.0119
Serving:0.0305
Blocking:-0.0869
Digging:0.4146
Source: 108765

Specialists of Division 1

The highest per set attack score was produced by Green Bay’s Lydia DeWeese.  Scoring eighteen true kills on thirty-one attempts with only two hitting errors in a competitive three set loss to Butler.  All three sets were won with two point margins and the third set scored 56 total points.

Butler vs. Green Bay (2017-09-02)

Top Performances

Lydia DeWeese

Green Bay


Game WPA

1.6394

Offense: 1.5634

Defense: 0.0760

Attacking: 1.5634
Setting:0.0000
Serving:0.0000
Blocking:0.0760
Digging:0.0000

Brooke Gregory

Butler


Game WPA

1.3003

Offense: 0.5983

Defense: 0.7020

Attacking: 0.6048
Setting:0.0000
Serving:-0.0065
Blocking:0.2662
Digging:0.4358

Makayla Ferguson

Butler


Game WPA

1.0560

Offense: 0.7703

Defense: 0.2857

Attacking: 0.1878
Setting:0.3963
Serving:0.1862
Blocking:0.1791
Digging:0.1065
Source: 108987

Minnesota’s own Samantha Seliger Swenson takes home the award for the highest setter score.  Samantha captured the award by slightly more than a thousandth per set, just edging Duquesne’s Dani Suiter.  A comfortable three set sweep of Tennessee provided the stat line for Gopher setter.

Game Not Available

Swenson accumulated forty-nine assists in three sets during a performance game that saw Minnesota hit 0.396.  More than a solid day at the office, but Swenson also added three kills, two blocks, and seven digs.

We come to the most fickle of skills the block.  The domain of those later described as having a sense of the moment, or a penchant for delivering in the clutch.  Lauren Frilling of Xavier takes home the prize this week.   Her eight block performance scored 0.4963 on the stat sheet.  Two solo blocks and four block assists in a four set loss to Miami of Ohio.

Miami (OH) vs. Xavier (2017-08-29)

Top Performances

Kristen Massa

Xavier


Game WPA

1.7186

Offense: 0.8735

Defense: 0.8451

Attacking: 0.6347
Setting:0.0000
Serving:0.2388
Blocking:0.0000
Digging:0.8451

Maeve McDonald

Miami (OH)


Game WPA

1.2996

Offense: 0.1164

Defense: 1.1832

Attacking: 0.0000
Setting:0.1159
Serving:0.0005
Blocking:0.0000
Digging:1.1832

Stela Kukoc

Miami (OH)


Game WPA

1.2457

Offense: 0.6643

Defense: 0.5814

Attacking: 0.8725
Setting:0.0000
Serving:-0.2082
Blocking:0.1511
Digging:0.4303
Source: 108451

Aces and service points rule the serving score and Ivana Blazevic of Maryland Eastern Shore certainly acquired plenty of both.  During Eastern Shore’s three set sweep of St. Francis Brooklyn, Blazevic served twenty-seven times and her team scored on twenty-two of them.  Eight times the ball went over and did not come back.  Ivana added thirty-six assists to her serving exhibition.

Game Not Available

Emily Lopes of CSU Bakersfield accumulated thirty-two digs in a four set match against Valparaiso.  Averaging eight digs per set and doubling the total of the next person on the team placed Emily as the top performer in the Roadrunners victory.

CSU Bakersfield vs. Valparaiso (2017-09-01)

Top Performances

Emily Lopes

CSU Bakersfield


Game WPA

1.4904

Offense: 0.0840

Defense: 1.4064

Attacking: 0.0000
Setting:0.0973
Serving:-0.0134
Blocking:0.0000
Digging:1.4064

Haylee Roberts

CSU Bakersfield


Game WPA

1.4224

Offense: 1.2411

Defense: 0.1813

Attacking: 1.2583
Setting:0.0172
Serving:-0.0343
Blocking:0.0923
Digging:0.0890

Brittany Anderson

Valparaiso


Game WPA

1.3023

Offense: 0.8639

Defense: 0.4384

Attacking: 0.0998
Setting:0.6613
Serving:0.1028
Blocking:0.0581
Digging:0.3802
Source: 108539

That’s it for the week’s Top Performances.  Congratulations to all of the standouts.

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A Sense of Impending Doom

Written By: HuskerGeek

An interesting fact was posted on Reddit in the Nebraska-Wisconsin post game thread.  Nebraska has been tied or better with 14 seconds to play in every ballgame.  I knew that fact in my head, but reading it is somehow different.  Ahead or tied in every ballgame with less than a quarter of a minute to play.

It would be easy to write about how Nebraska is crumbling in the clutch.  It would be easy to write about coaches who don’t know how to close out a game.  It would be easy to be negative.  It wouldn’t be honest. Continue Reading »

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