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2019/20 off-season Buff volleyball news & awards

AztecBuff

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I always like to set up these threads for all the sports to account for any off-season and spring (for this sport) scrimmage and training period news.

To start with, congrats to Sterling Parker for being named to the Pac 12 All-Freshmen team! In addition, she, as well as senior Justine Spann and sophomore Jenna Ewert were named All-Pac 12 honorable mention (https://pac-12.com/article/2019/12/02/pac-12-volleyball-postseason-honors-announced).

Also, the cubuffs.com release -





 
Assume very few here would be interested, and those who are are probably already aware, but just in case anyone else might be interested in watching (hopefully) great volleyball wanted to mention today is one of if not the best of the season for NCAA volleyball fans, as it's regional semifinal day (AKA the "Sweet 16"). (Hopefully this round will be of great interest to BUFF vball fans within the next year or two when CU is still in "it" at this point.)

Per a thread in Volleytalk (http://volleytalk.proboards.com/thread/79706/regionals-viewing-schedule-friday-december?page=1), all 8 matches are on either ESPN3 or ESPNU.

The 1st match is already completed, and overall #1 ranked and seeded Baylor defeated Purdue. The 1st of 3 Pac 12 teams remaining, #8 seed udub, is up 18-12 in the 1st set over Kentucky. The other 2 Pac teams remaining, Utah and Stanford, are facing off against each other at Stanford at 9:00 PM MT.
 
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Again, just in case there are any volleyball fans out there, wanted to note the 1st of the 4 Elite 8 games is starting now, with all of the matches scheduled to be shown back to back on ESPNU. (There's only 2 hours budgeted for each, and that's typically only enough for matches that are either 3 or a VERY short 4 sets, so assume they may also need to offer at least the start of the one or more of the later matches on ESPN3 or ???.)

The 1st match is the Pac 12's Washington against the #1 ranked (and host of their regional) Baylor. The other Pac 12 team remaining, #3 seed Stanford (which won a 5 setter over Utah last night), is in the last match vs. Penn State, which is scheduled to start at 8:00 tonight MT.

The full lineup can be seen in the http://volleytalk.proboards.com/thread/79774/regional-finals-december-viewing-schedule Volleytalk thread.
 
I've been watching

With the Buffs not involved, can't say I find anything that exciting, but should be an interesting final 4 next weekend with Pac 12 and National power Stanford (going for championship #3 for it's current powerhouse senior class and #9 overall) being joined by 3 schools (Baylor, Minnesota and Wisconsin) that have never won an NCAA women's vball championship.
 
With Plummer back, I think and hope Stanford takes the championship again.

I would not mind if Wisconsin or Minnesota won, but **** Baylor.
 
Highlight of the season, but I think it was the Pac-12/Big 10 Challenge because the game was held in Iowa City, which is not in China.
 
Congrats to all!


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Also, wanted to mention tonight are the Final 4 matches, with #1 seed and ranked Baylor facing off with #4 Wisconsin at 5:00 PM MT, while #3 Stanford meets #7 Minnesota at 7:30 PM (depending on the length of the 1st match). Both matches are on ESPN.
 
National championship will be Wisconsin vs. Stanford.

I watched most of the Wisconsin- **** Baylor match Then life totally got in the way and I didn't see the Stanford match
 
Just wanted to wish CU's conference-mate Stanford best wishes today, as they go for a record-extending*** 9th NCAA national volleyball championship at 6:00 PM MT (televised on ESPN2) against a tough Wisconsin squad. (***Penn State is 2nd in all-time NCAA WVB Championships with 7.)


 
As I did with soccer in its thread a couple days ago, I have a note re volleyball's recruiting, and also wanted to post some of the team's rankings, ratings, etc. for reference when next season closes in :
  • 1st, wanted to note that Prepvolleyball.com at the end of last year released its "Top 50 Junior" list, (this would be for the freshman class of 2021), along with a list of 13 players who JUST missed the Top 50, along with "The Other 65" who missed the other lists. Prepvolleyball is a largely premium website, but they do often allow some Volleytalk posters to give generic information about their rankings (typically the college to which the player has committed, and their position, but not their name). In the Volleytalk thread about the Class of 2021 (http://volleytalk.proboards.com/thread/74829/top-2021-talent?page=15), Colorado is listed 3 times as being in one or other of the lists. I only know of 3 Colorado 2021 verbal commits at this point,and they all play different positions, so would assume the (hopefully) future Buffs being recognised are:
    • The one Colorado player in the Top 50 is a setter, so assume it must be Taylor Simpson (who hails from Chatsworth CA). (Note - unlike Prepvolleyball's "Senior Aces" list, they don't give individual ranks for the players in the junior Top 50, but just list them by position and name.)
    • There is also an outside hitter listed in the "Just Missed 13" list. I assume that must be Phoenix AZ's Jahara Campbell.
    • Finally, they have a will-be Colorado defender (libero/ defensive specialist) listed in the 65 "Other Top Players Considered" list. Assume that must be Northfield Minnesota's Emma Torstenson.
Hope all 3 continue to develop their games, and enjoy the remainder of their time in high school!

(Edit- This has already been noted in the recruiting thread, but for anyone interested who doesn't frequent that thread, Buff volleyball currently only has one signer for its 2020 frosh class (after a huge 7 member 2019 class), outside hitter Maya Tabron from Gilroy California. In their "100 Senior Aces" rankings for that class announced early last September, she was Prepvolleyball.com's #82 ranked high school senior in the country. See https://cubuffs.com/news/2019/11/13/volleyball-buffs-add-elite-talent-in-tabron.aspx for more on her.)
____________________

Also (mainly for my own reference when next season gets close to starting), have been meaning to just put in one place some Buff soccer facts and figures for last season:
  • The Buffs ended up with a 13-17 overall record, and 5-15 in conference play. That record in conference equated to them ending up in a 3 way tie (with Oregon and Arizona) for 9th place in the final standings. (All 5 of the wins came in the 2nd half of the season, as the team was winless (0-10) the 1st half of conference.)
Re RPI -
  • At the time of tournament selection:
    • the Buffs had the #70 RPI, with a .56788 score. (Their Strength of Schedule ended up being #23 overall, while it was #111 only considering non-conference matches This is out of 336 teams that make up D1 volleyball.)
    • As a conference, the Pac 12 was the highest rated in the country, with a 0.5877 score. (The Big 10, which the Pac seems to always compete with for top conference, was close behind in 2nd with a 0.5838.)
  • Not that it matters as much, but at the end of the season (after the tournament was over), the final RPI ratings were:
    • The Buffs final adjusted RPI stayed the same at #70 (with a .56633 score), while the overall strength of schedule moved up a bit to #21.
    • I could not find a conference rating listing for the final RPI.
In the final Massey rankings (I don't believe they matter for selection, but are another way to evaluate a team):
  • The Buffs ended up #38 with a 1.77 score, with the #10 strength of schedule in the country.
  • As with RPI, the Pac 12 was also the top rated conference in Massey, with a 1.93 score, ahead of the Big 10's 1.83. (The B10 was quite a bit ahead of the #3 Big 12, which had a 1.63 score.)

The "gold standard" rating for volleyball fans/ experts in the Volleytalk forum seems to be the Pablo ratings. (Like Massey, these are NOT used by the NCAA selection committee.) These are generally proprietary ratings visible only to premium subscribers of, I believe, the richkern.com website. However, that website has allowed one or two Volleytalk posters to release the information for Pac schools as part of a weekly Pac 12 thread. In the last one of those threads I could find, which looks to have the ratings from before the last week of conference play (the Buffs went 1-1-1 at home that week, sweeping Oregon before getting swept by Utah, http://volleytalk.proboards.com/thread/79482/pac-final-standings-honors-2019?page=1), looks like the Buffs were #43.
(One other fun thing that thread did was quickly analyze all the Pac teams and place them in order of average conference finish from 2014 on. Based on that, the Buffs have finished an average of 7th place during that period.)

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________


In a totally unrelated piece of Pac 12 related news today, there is big news (to vball fans) about a surprising coaching change, as (now) former USC coach Brent Crouch has been announced the new coach at Auburn (https://auburntigers.com/news/2020/1/14/brent-crouch-named-auburn-head-volleyball-coach.aspx ). From a pure volleyball perspective, this is VERY surprising, as I'd say USC is, at minimum, one of the historical top 8 programs in volleyball, while Auburn looks to have only made the NCAA tournament once in its history (2010), and are coming off a 1-17 SEC season. (To put this in football terms I'd say, based on the prestige of the programs, this is roughly equivalent to the head coaches at Notre Dame or Florida announcing, without any prior warning or rumor, that they had decided to leave their schools to become the head coach at Oregon State or Kansas.)

Main talking points related to this (based on my always suspect discernment) on the Volleytalk forum:
  • I assume it can be assumed that at least part of this is related to cost of living, as obviously a dollar goes a lot farther in Auburn than L.A. (The thought is Auburn may have loosened its purse strings to get a relatively big name coach. Per https://247sports.com/college/aubur...n-in-operating-revenue-128729307/#128729307_1 , looks like the OLD volleyball head coach, INCLUDING benefits, made ~$175K for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2018.)
  • In the Volleytalk thread, this led to the usual questioning (also in Allbuffs) of Larry Scott's competence in negotiating media contracts, and how that relative lack of revenue might have limited USC's ability to compete with Auburn. (Of course, in addition to revenue, I believe USC's AD may also have some legal issues and costs expended and/ or pending (???) that other Pac 12 schools don't have.)
  • If one wants a counter argument to the last one, then I know frequenting Volleytalk a LOT that USC fans were not that impressed with Coach Crouch, who was only the head coach there for 2 seasons (with his prior job being head coach at Portland). So, it may also have been that USC did not want to fight that hard to keep him, and won't mind (especially with a new AD) having a chance to get "their own" coach in. (Note- Coach Crouch replaced legendary (probable future Hall of Famer if not already) coach Mick Haley, who was let go after the 2017 season, and last I'd heard has an outstanding age discrimination lawsuit going against USC.)
 
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Today was the post-season banquet. Best wishes to all the Buffs this coming semester in both the classroom and in training, and thanks again to the 3 seniors!



Direct link - https://cubuffs.com/news/2020/1/19/volleyball-buffaloes-close-2019-season-at-annual-banquet.aspx

"
BOULDER – The University of Colorado women's volleyball program gathered Sunday morning in the Arrow Touchdown Club to celebrate the 2019 season and honor three departing seniors.

The annual banquet was a gathering of the masses with the team, support staff, administration, parents, families and key donors coming together to pay tribute to the hard work of the 2019 season.

Festivities began with Senior Women Administrator Ceal Barry presenting Head Coach Jesse Mahoney with a commemorative volleyball for his first top-10 national victory that came against No.5-ranked Illinois in the Pac-12 vs. BIG TEN Challenge. Coach then addressed everyone on the hard work that went on in the season. He expressed his gratitude towards the team for progressing throughout the season and noted that the team persevered through the first half of conference play and finished with five wins in the second half of play.

The most anticipated awards came in the middle of the banquet with the team's most valuable player honors. Sophomore setter Jenna Ewert was named the Offensive Most Valuable Player, while Rachel Whipple capped her career being named the Defensive MVP. The Scout Team MVP went to redshirt junior Leah Clayton, while the prestigious Heart of a Buff honor went to sophomore Taylor deProsse.
...

Colorado concluded the season with a 13-17 overall record and a 5-15 mark in Pac-12 play. The team returns 15 individuals and have added one freshman via letter of intent. The team will have two redshirt seniors next season, three redshirt juniors to go along with three juniors, six sophomores, one redshirt freshman and a true freshman. 2020 will mark the first time since Mahoney's first season that there have been as many or more upperclassmen as there are underclassmen.
"



(As a fan, one peripheral but still great thing to see is it looks like there are 18 women in the full team pictures, which was also the number of players on this year's roster. Hope that means all this year's non-seniors will be staying in Boulder and are still on the team for this semester's spring off-season training period.)
 
For anyone who wants to plan ahead … at the banquet Jesse told me that there would be one home spring match …. on April 18 against Denver..
 
It was over a month ago that she told us about the denial, if I remember right. So maybe she is appealing now. Didn't sound like she wanted to at the time but maybe now that she is back on the court she has decided to go for it.
 
It was over a month ago that she told us about the denial, if I remember right. So maybe she is appealing now. Didn't sound like she wanted to at the time but maybe now that she is back on the court she has decided to go for it.

Anyone know why she is having to petition for a 5th year?

I always get the impression the 1st "regular" redshirt is pretty much automatic as long as, like her, you never played in a match during a full official season.?.
(I usually hear about petitions if it's for a 6th year where there was a regular redshirt and then an injury occurs so the student-athlete requests a 6th year based on a medical redshirt.)
 
Sorry … I guess it should say she is looking for a 6th year.. I'm pretty sure she was petitioning to get back a year of eligibility for the 2018 season not for the most recent season.…2018 was the one in which she played part of the year then was out for the rest of the year. My understanding is like yours … that the normal "5 years to play 4" covers her for the most recent season in which she was out for the entire year.
 
Sorry … I guess it should say she is looking for a 6th year.. I'm pretty sure she was petitioning to get back a year of eligibility for the 2018 season not for the most recent season.…2018 was the one in which she played part of the year then was out for the rest of the year. My understanding is like yours … that the normal "5 years to play 4" covers her for the most recent season in which she was out for the entire year.

Ah, now I get it. Thanks.
 
Congrats and best wishes to Buff great Alexis Austin (2015 was her senior season) on earning her 1st professional*** college coaching job!!!
(***Per the article linked to in the tweet, she was a grad assistant coach the past 2 seasons at Rice Univ..)



(As an aside- As a big CU volleyball fan, I always feel a little extra-appreciative of her and (Boulder's own) Nicole Edelman, both of whom came to the Buffs in 2012 as highly ranked recruits (Ms. Austin was ranked #26 and Ms. Edelman #38 in their high school class by Prepvolleyball), committing and staying committed to CU in spite of the team going through one of if not its toughest patches in history. AND, their freshman years also coincided with the Buffs having recently joined (in 2011) an overall much tougher (Pac 12) volleyball conference.
Would the team have been able to pull out of the tail spin it was experiencing nearly as quickly if the 2 hadn't been there to help the team improve, and thus (I can only assume) helping draw other more-talented players to join the team?
(Prior to their arrival, the team had only gone 1-19, 7-13, 2-18 and 3-17 in Big 12 play from 2007-2010, and then 1-21 in its 1st year in the Pac 12. With the help of their (and of course their teammates' and coaches') hard work and talent, the team slowly grind-ed its way to respectability, going from 4-16 to 9-11 to 11-9 twice in a row in (Pac 12) conference play from 2012 to 2015, and earning NCAA Tournament bids in 2013 and 2014 (and being RPI victims in 2015).))
(Edit- Noticed I screwed up the years that Ms. Austin was with the Buffs, so corrected some of the above.)

(Thanks to the Volleytalk coaching change thread for the news of Ms. Austin's new job.)
 
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For those of us who followed volleyball before Liz Kritzka came to CU, none of the success she had would have happened without Nicole and Alexis.

I enjoyed hearing Liz tell the story of recruiting Alexis.

Congrats Alexis.
 
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