NCAA Women's Final Four Wrap-Up

Illinois entered this past weekend's NCAA Women's Final Four with an interesting proposition. To win the national championship, the Fighting Illini would most likely have to win the championship of Los Angeles. USC stood as the opponent in Thursday's semi-finals, with UCLA up next in Saturday's finals provided the Bruins could handle Florida State (which UCLA did, via sweep).

The Illini passed its first test, besting USC in a five-game classic. On the final point of the Illinois-USC match, shown here on YouTube, the ball crossed the net 20 times, before the Trojans hit it out to give the Illini a 15-10 win in the closing set.

Unfortunately for Illinois, its difficulty in putting the ball away on the final point vs. USC foreshadowed troubles it would have doing so two nights later against UCLA. The Bruins had the upper hand for most of the championship match and won in four, 25-23, 23-25, 26-24, 25-16.

Thanks to a pair of Illini spurts -- outscoring UCLA 12-3 to take Game 2 after trailing 20-13, and 5-1 to get two set-points in Game 3 -- the match could have gone in a different direction (see box score/play-by-play sheet). The Illini couldn't close out Game 3, however, as their spike attempts while leading 24-22 and 24-23 were dug by UCLA. The Bruins won both rallies to tie the score at 24-24 and then won the next two points as well (if you check the match video at the ESPN3.com archive, the final stages of Game 3 appear at the 1 hour, 50 minute point).

The two teams' final hitting percentages were very similar, .218 for UCLA and .215 for Illinois. Rather, the Bruin win seems mainly attributable to defense, with UCLA outblocking (15-11.5) and outdigging (87-76) Illinois. The serving game was also important, with the Illini committing 11 errors to none for the Bruins; despite Illinois's seemingly more aggressive serving approach, it racked up only two more aces than did UCLA (4-2).

The Illini's powerful offensive game was limited to a .215 hitting percentage by UCLA, in contrast to the .279 Illinois was able to generate vs. USC. The following graphic (on which you may click to enlarge) compares what happened on all of Illinois's total spike attempts (TA) vs. USC (left column) with what happened on all of the Illini's swings vs. UCLA (right column).

Whereas Illinois got kills on 39.1% of its hitting attempts vs. USC, the Illini succeeded only 32.6% of the time vs. UCLA. A team is officially credited with a block when the ball goes rocketing back to the floor on the hitting team's side of the net for a defensive point. UCLA scored via block on 8.3% of Illinois's swings,  whereas USC did so on only 4.6% of them (USC more frequently induced the Illini to commit the other type of hitting error, hitting the ball out of bounds, than did UCLA, 6.6% of the time compared to 2.8%). UCLA also dug 48.1% of Illinois's spike attempts, compared to the 44.2% of Illini hits that USC dug.

UCLA dropped only three sets in its six NCAA tourney matches, one each to San Diego, Texas, and Illinois. The Bruins are fortunate the championship match didn't go to five games, as the Illini's record this season in matches going the distance was 7-0...