Only in the Sweet Sixteen win by No. 14-seed Nebraska (CACOD = 1.72) over No. 3 Washington (2.23) did a team with a lower CACOD beat one with a higher one. Unseeded BYU (1.99) knocked off No. 6 Florida State (1.65), then followed up by topping Nebraska, sending the Cougars to the Final Four.
All three other regionals went exactly as the CACOD predicted, with No. 1 Stanford, No. 2 Texas, and No. 5 Penn State joining BYU in advancing to the Final Four.
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In a rematch of last year's national championship match, Penn State once again outlasted Wisconsin in four games (22-25, 25-16, 25-22, 25-19; box score) to win the Louisville regional. One thing I examined from last year's final was how each team won its points (i.e., percent from kills, aces, blocks, opponent service errors, etc.). A natural comparison, therefore, is how Penn State and Wisconsin won their points against each other in last year's final and in Saturday's regional final.
For the Nittany Lions, two differences were apparent. Whereas Penn State amassed 63.5% of its points in last year's final from kills, the figure Saturday against Wisconsin was 57.7% (i.e., the Lions scored 56 of their 97 total points with their own kills). In contrast, Penn State went from getting only 7.3% of its points from Badger service errors in last year's finals (7 of PSU's 96 points coming from Wisconsin serving miscues) to obtaining 14.4% of points last Saturday in this way (14 of the Nittany Lions' 97 points coming from Wisconsin serving errors). The percentages for all other point-scoring categories (e.g., blocks, aces) were pretty similar for PSU between the two matches. Overall, then, Wisconsin made things easier for Penn State in this year's regional final than in last year's national title match by giving the Nittany Lions 7 extra points on Badger serving errors, points PSU did not need to earn via kills.
Compared to last year's final, Wisconsin earned a slightly higher percentage of its points last Saturday from kills (53.7 to 49.5), but smaller share from Penn State service errors (9.8 to 13.2). Percentages in other categories were similar in the two matches.
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For the second straight year, Washington failed to take advantage of playing in the university's home city of Seattle (last year's national semifinal vs. Penn State and, as noted above, in this year's Sweet Sixteen vs. Nebraska). The Huskies were led in recent years by outgoing senior outside-hitter Krista Vansant. Taking selected matches from this year's Huskies schedule, I looked at how well Vansant (in purple) and her teammates (collectively, in gold) hit in several key U-Dub wins and the team's three losses (shaded in gray). You may click on the graphic to enlarge it.
In the Huskies' losses at Colorado (Vansant .154, teammates .190) and Utah (Vansant .197, teammates .184), everyone struggled with their hitting percentages. Against Nebraska, however, things were a little different. Vansant hit a respectable .273, but her teammates collectively hit .219. In all the other matches graphed, which the Huskies won, the teammates had hit at or around .260, or higher.
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