Friday, Feb. 12 Match Day!

Updates: Due to weather, PLU and Whitman cancelled their matches this weekend. Southwestern has just announced their matches with Dallas are also cancelled.

The cancellation of the Southwestern matches is truly like someone cancelled Christmas.

I asked nicely on Twitter to hold off on the TLU/St. Thomas match for a few minutes but they didn’t listen, I guess. “Net post” was just used for the antenna. Am I the only one that still calls it the antenna? “Sticks” were used last weekend by someone.

Late in the first set. TLU with 8 attack errors while St. Thomas with only 1. TLU have earned 15 points while St. Thomas only 10. St. Thomas leads. Errors aren’t fun.

Kacie Hall part of a 5-2 setup by TLU. The 6′ player sets when going across the front.

18-12 in Points for TLU but they lose 25-23. Way too many errors by TLU gave this set away. Both teams suffering from a service reception problem right now.

Big lead early for St. Thomas. TLU hitting -0.130. Yikes! The announcer seems to have his own set of stats. What he’s saying doesn’t match Live Stats. Big lead to start and then a huge comeback but a late push by St. Thomas gives them a 2-0 lead.

Third set is close but we lost Live Stats. Offensively, TLU has been better if you go by Points/Set but 8 more attack errors and 7 more service errors have just hurt them too much. And, we’re going to a fourth set.

St. Thomas wins the match taking the fourth set 25-21. Looked like TLU’s Peyton Sulak went down with an ankle or leg injury late in this one. Hoping a speedy recovery there. Live Stats is a bit behind but I believe this will be only the second match in the West Region that will be lost by the team with the better points/set.

ETBU with a close set one win over Belhaven 25-23. ETBU leads the second. And now ETBU takes the second set. They are hitting 0.254 through 2 sets. Hope Shipp having a nice match so far.

Lots of VB going on right now. ETBU gets the sweep over Belhaven with an easy 3rd set victory. St. Thomas takes set one over TLU 25-15 and Colorado College does the same over Schreiner this time 25-13.

I’m going to jinx this but Schreiner is playing very well right now. Up in the second set 12-7 with a timeout by Colorado College. Late push by the Celts gives them a 2-0 lead over TLU.

It’s 23-16 Schreiner in the second set. Credit to Schreiner as they are playing smart and limiting errors. 24-17. 7 set points coming for Schreiner. Needed a few of them but they win 25-20. This will not be a sweep.

Saint Thomas with a sweep over TLU. Points/Set in this one was St. Thomas 14.67 and TLU 13.33. So, TLU definitely took a step back in this one while St. Thomas stayed consistent. Colorado College up by 1 point in the third set. Now 20-19 Schreiner and Schreiner is hitting negative!

Schreiner take set 3 and is leading 2-1. Huge upset in the making. Worth a watch if you are reading this!!!!! Belhaven takes set one over ETBU in their second match of the night. Whitworth takes set one over Puget Sound. Man, Whitworth. Don’t bet against them I guess. Just noticed that Schreiner won that third set hitting zero.

Great play by Colorado College at 17-15 to win the point. Forces a timeout. Belhaven takes set two and now lead 2-0. The ASC East Division is getting tighter. The Schreiner announcer just said, “I don’t know a lot about volleyball.” What?

Whitworth up 2-0. I really wanted to watch this match but Schreiner/CC have me glued. CC’s Isabella Lipacis is keeping them in this. 18 kills hitting 0.341. ETBU takes set three. Down 2-1 against Belhaven.

Colorado College avoids the upset and takes set five 15-10. Gotta love volleyball.

Katy Barr (Whitworth) with 5 aces?!?!

I guess I brought UPS some luck as they take set three. Neither team is really committing a lot of errors in this one. ETBU/Belhaven about to go to 5-sets. Oh, the UPS stream quality is HORRIBLE!

Whitworth has a large lead and looking to close this match out. Two really bad points by UPS just happened to cause a timeout. ETBU is 2 points away from winning their match.

If you are unfamiliar with a reverse sweep, we just had one. ETBU after dropping the first two sets comes back and sweeps Belhaven to win 3-2. A huge 22 point match for Allie Fennell (ETBU).

Whitworth gets the 4 set win over Puget Sound. Statistically, not that much difference between the two teams. One big difference – plus 11 in the serving game for Whitworth when you account for service aces and errors.

That’s it for tonight. Early start tomorrow with our first look at Trinity.

Random Thoughts: Reminder that the second match of these double-headers can occur and different times depending on what happened in the first one.

The first SCAC match of the season is an early one today and should be a good one. TLU usually finishes just behind the top 3 in the SCAC and St. Thomas showed last season that they will create problems for teams moving forward. Starting with TLU and we can see that they have 19 on the roster with 7 freshmen. They also picked up some transfers with Hayden Smyers being one to watch out for offensively and on the defensive side it looks like Kylee Shirley may be able to help right away. It’s kind of remarkable to say that this team had 10 players with over 100 points last season and will be returning half of them led by Peyton Sulak (321.5 points) and Paige Day (287.5). It’s at this point I have to wonder how I missed them for my Top 10 rankings. They will have to replace their setter but return Lexi Morris (742 digs) in the libero spot.

I really like St. Thomas but the greatest gift they have given me is that they got rid of their old website! Welcome to this century! The Celts have rostered 15 players, which include 4 freshmen. They’ve picked up one transfer but for the most part this team is full of returners. They had 8 players go over the 100 point mark last season and have 5 returning. They will be led by Alaina Lanik (337 points) and Emily Jaroszewski (251 points). The Celts will be keeping their setters including all-everything Kelsie Walker and their defense will remain mostly intact. Yeah, the Celts are going to be a handful this season. Where I’m quite confident I’ll be moving TLU into my rankings at some point, St. Thomas will belong but will not qualify in my mind. They are in only their second year transitioning to DIII and still retain players recruited under a totally different set of rules. Not their problem as I see a number of quality wins happening regardless of my personal principles. (Update: I left what I wrote early yesterday in but it turns out St. Thomas is eligible for the SCAC Tournament so I will consider them in my rankings moving forward. Fair? Nah. But there is a lot of not-fair this season.)

Next up is Dallas and they were a surprise pick in my Top 10 rankings. I’m not going to lie, but I was a little freaked out over my researching after revisiting TLU above. But, I confirmed what I liked about Dallas and think that both schools will be tough this year. I just think the SCAC coaches missed on them. Now, just don’t let me down. What I like about Dallas is that they are basically returning everyone. They scored over 2000 points as a team and loss less than 6% of that. They had six players over 100 points and return them all including two 400+ point players in Dajah Whyte and Abigail Porras. Setter Larissa Ramirez was given the reigns last season and didn’t disappoint with over 1100 assists. Dallas will need to replace their libero but with 19 players on the roster (including 6 freshmen), I think the coaching staff can find an answer. Jeez, the SCAC is going to be brutal this season.

I wrote about Southwestern in the Top 10 article, but I was so freaked out about ranking Dallas (also in that article) over TLU that I wrote about them again above. So, in fairness but also being very brief, here is Southwestern. They are going to be really good.

Okay, maybe a bit more. I think the key with the team will be getting setter Katelyn Whitehead for the entire year. This will allow Lauren Crabtree to focus on fewer responsibilities (she did everything last season) as she’s one of the hardest hitting pin hitters in the conference. What the team is missing is a second outside. Watch to see if freshman Alex Grooms runs away with it. Regardless, if the Pirates answer that question and stay healthy they may be one of the only teams to challenge Trinity this season.

I talked about ETBU in their first Match Day so revisit there if you need a Tiger fix. Belhaven, on the other hand, has seen no love from me this year I believe. The Blazers have 17 on the roster including 5 freshmen and two players transferring from other colleges. They had a small points loss going into this season but did lose a couple of returners now that I’ve gone back and revisited. Still, they are at only 18% points loss so definitely a great sign. Look for them to be led, once again, by Callista Moore (273 points) and Vivien Marquez (201.5 points). They return their setting and defense and it should be noted that the team is still quite young. They will be better this year and that should continue for the next couple of seasons.

My biggest dilemma this season was Colorado College. Now they are ranked so they are also in the Top 10 article if you want some insight on them. With that said, it will be interesting to see how the team reacts to their long-time coach retiring. Especially when we get to the conference tournament as every match has added significance. Look for Georgia Mullins to be a force out of the middle. Still enough here to challenge Trinity.

Schreiner is in for a tough season simply because there is so much talent in this conference. The returning player to watch is Kayla Lofland who is coming off a fabulous freshman season. Overall, Schreiner has 15 on the roster with 7 freshmen and just one senior in Amanda Combs (299.5 points). This is a young team that needs to learn and grow this season and see if they can break out next season. Defensively they are in good shape but are a little undersized at the net. They will also need to replace their setters. Tough first weekend for the Mountaineers going against Colorado College, but a great opportunity to see what is going to work for this squad moving forward.

The NWC matches are all between teams that have played or should have played. You can find their write-ups in this Match Day.

Overall, some fun matches today. I’m torn because I want Dallas to prove me right but I also need my Pirates to take them down. I think the TLU/St. Thomas matches will be really tight. Whitworth and Whitman had to postpone their match last week so I’m going to be intrigued to see how they look. Whitman is young and coming off a season that wasn’t very good. Whitworth had a massive change over but this is a power program in the NWC and they rarely falter too much.