Weekend Round-Up (Sept 16-17, 2011)

USC, which a week ago was routed on its home floor by UCLA, went into Seattle on Friday night and shocked the No. 4 and heretofore unbeaten Washington Huskies, 25-20, 28-26, 25-20. The Trojans did it not so much with scorching offense, hitting .240 as a team, but to a large extent with defense. Natalie Hagglund contributed 30 digs against Washington, one of the reasons the Huskies hit only .128 as a team. The Trojans completed a perfect weekend by also sweeping Washington State on Saturday, hitting .447 as a team along the way.

If one were to pick out USC's most significant matches of the season thus far, they would probably be the opening-tournament contests against Minnesota and Penn State (at Penn State), the loss to Central Florida in the Florida Gulf Coast tourney, and the three Pac 12 conference matches. I thought it would be interesting to see how the Trojans' leading hitters have fared in those six matches in terms of hitting percentages, so I created the following table:

	Minn	PSU	UCF	UCLA	@UW	@WSU
Burnham	-.083	.452	.188	.105	DNP	0 Att.
Fuller	.160	.185	.000	.300	.231	.579
Jupiter	.327	.200	.000	.056	.097	.308
Schraer	.333	.571	.000	.083	.250	.364
Shaw	.250	.000	.000	.333	.481	.583
Williams	.552	.269	.500	.118	.167	.571

HTML Tables

Legend to table: Wins, Losses. Middle blockers in italics.

Several observations are noteworthy, in my view:

*Nobody has shown a lot of consistency in these matches, with plenty of sub-.200 and sub-.100 percentages in evidence.

*Lauren Williams has had her ups-and-downs, exceeding .500 in three matches, but hitting much lower in the other contests. Middle blockers (of which Williams is one) seem to have higher hitting percentages than their outside-hitting counterparts, which is why I've italicized the names of middles. As commenters on VolleyTalk have pointed out, sets to the middles almost always occur when the offense is running in system, middles rarely face double-blocks, etc.

*Katie Fuller and Sara Shaw have really picked things up with the start of conference play.

*Hannah Schraer has, for the most part been solid, but has had some off-matches, whereas Alex Jupiter has slumped even more.

*Kirby Burnham's big evening vs. Penn State appears to have been a one-off, and she does not appear to play much of a role in the USC offense at this time. Whether she has had injury problems or not, I don't know.

Washington, for its part, bounced back from the 'SC loss with a vengeance yesterday against UCLA, sweeping the Bruins. As this game article notes, the Huskies:

...hit .340 for the match with senior Bianca Rowland getting back into dominant form with 12 kills and a .647 attack percentage. Junior Kylin Muñoz had one of the highest quality efforts of her career with a team-leading 13 kills and just one error for a .429 attack percentage, and setter Evan Sanders was on target all night with 41 assists.

Next weekend, USC and UCLA host Cal and Stanford.

...

Turning to the Big 10, new member Nebraska warmed up for its huge conference-opener this coming Wednesday when Penn State comes to town by slamming its former Big 12 rival Iowa State, 25-23 , 25-15, 25-18. The Huskers sided-out (i.e., winning points on ISU's serve) at a 74% rate for the match, 86% in Game 2.

Four Nebraska players exceeded .300 hitting in the box score: Gina Mancuso (14 attempts, 1 error, 35 attempts, for a .371 percentage); Brooke Delano (6-1-14, .357); Morgan Broekhuis (11-4-23, .304); and Hayley Thramer (6-1-15, .333).

Looking at Iowa State's top hitters from when the Cyclones upset Florida back on Labor Day, only Kelsey Petersen (3-0-13, .231) had even a decent night against Nebraska. Jamie Straube (-.067) and Tenisha Matlock (.000) were definitely kept in check by the Huskers. Carly Jenson, who hit only .053 vs. Florida, did much better against Nebraska with a .275 evening (17-6-40).

The blocking comparison tells it all: Nebraska had 13 total team blocks and Iowa State only had 1. One place the Cyclones held their own was in digging (perhaps because so many Husker hits were getting through the block). ISU had 56 digs with four players in double figures, whereas Nebraska had 55.

This coming Wednesday night (7:00 Central), Iowa State hosts Missouri in a national ESPN-U telecast. If you get the Big 10 Network, you can also watch Penn State-Nebraska on Wednesday

Elsewhere in the Big 10, Michigan swept Texas A&M in a mostly tight match, 25-23, 25-23, 25-17, to win its own tournament and complete a perfect 12-0 non-conference record. With Lexi Dannemiller taking over at setter from last year's senior Lexi Zimmerman, and directing plenty of balls to tournament MVP Lexi Erwin, the Wolverines were able to prevail.