As Goes Lowe...

In one of the marquee matches of this past weekend, the Washington Huskies upped their overall record to 15-0 with a comeback from two games down against UCLA. Scores were 18-25, 24-26, 25-17, 25-20, 15-10. With the hot hitting of 6-foot-4 senior OH Karsta Lowe pacing the Bruins this season, I was curious how well she attacked in each of the five games vs. the Huskies.

Lowe hit an uncharacteristically low .143 for the entire match, with 28 kills and 19 attack errors on 63 swings. Particular players' game-specific hitting percentages are not available from standard box scores, but play-by-play sheets, such as the one for UCLA-UW, can at least give us a player's kills and hitting errors by game (only final dispositions of plays are listed, so spike attempts kept in play don't appear). As shown in the following chart, I used the play-by-play to tabulate Lowe's kills and attack errors in each of the five games (you can click on the graphic to enlarge it).

Not surprisingly, Lowe's kills well outnumbered her errors in the first two games, won by the Bruins. Counter to expectation, however, the same pattern continued into Game 3, which the Huskies won. In the final two games, won by Washington, Lowe's errors exceeded her kills.

In no way is this posting intended to blame Lowe for the UCLA loss. Hitting is only the final product of a sequence that flows from passing and setting. Also, Washington likely made defensive adjustments after the second game that curtailed not just Lowe's, but other UCLA players' hitting effectiveness, as shown in the next graph.

Finally, the Huskies' hitting effectiveness rose dramatically after Game 2. This suggests that the Bruins' defense was as much, or more, of a problem, relative to their offense, as the match started slipping away.