Playing in Omaha, not far from the school's Lincoln campus, the University of Nebraska swept the University of Texas, 25-23, 25-23, 25-21, to win the Cornhusker program's fourth NCAA title (the third under current coach John Cook) on Saturday, December 19. Here's a link to the box score and play-by-play sheet. As shown in the following graph, Nebraska outhit Texas by a substantial margin in each game. Yet the games were tight (especially the first two). The Huskers were called for three "assist errors" (perhaps the setter backing into the net or contacting the ball above the net when starting out from the back row) and one ball-handling error for the match, whereas the Longhorns were called for none of either, thus giving UT a four-point advantage in that department and negating some of NU's hitting edge. Pacing the Husker hitting attack were outside-hitter Mikaela Foecke (.385 percentage, based on 19 kills and 4 errors, on 39 swings) and middles Amb

I didn't write much during the regular season, but I'm ready to go for the NCAA women's tournament. I have once again produced my Conference-Adjusted Combined Offensive-Defensive (CACOD) metric, the methodology of which is explained here . The heart of the CACOD is the ratio of a team's own hitting percentage to the hitting percentage allowed to opponents. The 64 NCAA teams are ranked below on the CACOD (unless you have amazing eyesight, you'll want to click on the images to enlarge them). The principle is simple: Whenever two teams play, the one with the higher CACOD would be favored to win. The CACOD's success rate in predicting winners of NCAA women's tournament matches has been right up there with other forecasting tools such as Pablo, Massey/Elo, and RK (see here and here ). Last year, the CACOD foresaw BYU's run of upsets in the NCAA tourney. The Washington Huskies (28-2) come out No. 1 on the CACOD, with a clear margin over th