Saturday’s regional finals
Saturday’s Regional finals
TV available for most
Bracket link below. click on match wanted for Game Center links
http://www.ncaa.com/interactive-bracket/volleyball-women/d1
BYU def. Nebraska, 25-21, 25-20, 25-21
Penn State def. Wisconsin 22-25, 25-16, 25-22, 25-19
Texas def. North Carolina 25-21, 18-25, 25-20, 31-29
Stanford def. Florida, 25-17, 25-14, 25-21
COMMENTS
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IMO before game starts BYU will beat Nebraska…another upset special!
BYU vs Nebraska…..I dislike both teams so its a no win situation. I think the final is going to be Stanford vs. Texas. Inky Ajanku is a beast. Florida really had no answer for her. I think they’ll finally take down Penn State and beat Texas for the Championship.
So much for my predictions…I though that Wisconsin would win it all & that Florida would somehow find its way to the Final Four…
Stanford all the way. They were on tonight. Everything was working for them.
Watching BYU and Nebraska. Hardy is playing well.
Alohi Robins-Hardy is running a nice BYU offense.
Wow. Tough match, but BYU swept Nebraska 3-0. They are going to the semis.
Huskers used up everything against UW…Don’t think BYU can beat Texas…Bell & Eckerman are too good…
Alohi set a great match. BYU has a bunch of weapons they can go to. Absolutely they have a chance with such a great block too. Good for Alohi. She’s at a great program to be at.
After watching the regional finals, the one thing that becomes apparently clear is how far NaWahine need to go to compete on this level. Hope the returning UH players were able to be inspired to improve.
The defense is there, although we wil miss Mendoza. the setting and in turn the hitting by the outsides is not!
Man I am bummed we missed out on Robins- Hardy. I knew she would be good but not this soon.
not to mention Anae and Kan.
With Robins Hardy setting, Kan at Libero and Anae at the pins, UH is probably top 10 this year, oh well.
8. Couldn’t agree with you more, particularly in the passing, setting and hitting departments. Next year’s preseason games should tell us how much UH has improved, particularly with Florida coming in.
I know that no one will, but give credit to Penn State…Lost three starters yet finished 2nd in the Big 10 & found their way back to the Final Four, losing just one set along the way…
10. well it helps when you get 4 top ten recruits, 6 in the top 20….
11…and great coaching…
11. Eh, it’s great recruiting mostly. Haleigh Washington would be great anywhere.
I think they will be back to normal next year when they lose Hancock, her serve saves them in a lot of sets.
13. What’s “back to normal” for Penn St?
15. not making the final four.
People need to remember some athletes choose to go to the other schools either due to their faith, better education or facilities, and the experiences being away from home. Another big factor is we cannot offer every athlete a scholie…and we have a lot of talented girls out of the local high schools that get passed up here… so it is evident you get some but you lose many too…Hawaii per capita got the best athletes in football, volleyball, etc…..MARCUS MORIOTA!!
I think Hawaii could hang with N.C., Florida,
and Nebraska on their best flawless night. Penn St., Stanford, Texas, and BYU’s block would be the teams Hawaii this year may not be able to compete with…Now, next year if they shore up their obvious weaknesses from the players to coaching, they could go very deep into the tourney IMO….
4. Is that true so the womens basketball coach wanted her to play basketball only??
for a freshmen she is so smooth, someone said on volleytalk that she’s like a tall courtney thompson and that’s so true. UH really missed the boat on this one, athough not volleyball coache’s fault since she would have gone on basketball scholarship.
oh well at least we have iosia coming in in 2016. however if Robins Hardy wants to transfer next year, that would be fantastic lol
21. Not sure what you mean by UH hanging with other teams, but Nebraska handled a Washington team that clearly dominated UH. Agree that UH has trouble with the bigger blocking teams.
21. UW did not ‘clearly dominate’ UH. If so, it wouldn’t have gone 4. Hawaii did get worn down in final two sets against a bigger team with a huge home court advantage. and got into a couple of bad rotations. UW definitely took advantage of Greeley’s immobility in the back row. Was very surprised that Shoji did not use a back-row sub when Greeley was not moving well after rolling the ankle in Friday’s match.
#20. Alohi wanted to play both sports (like Adolpho). Not sure if Beeman wanted her or not, but did not want a 2nd player doing what Adolpho did. Think Shoji wanted her for VB, but not his call. As a two-sport player she needed to be on a BB scholarship. Either Beeman needed to offer & let her play VB, or Alohi needed to only play 1 (VB assuming Shoji had a scholarship to offer). But, perhaps she just wanted to go away too.
When Kalei Adolpho played basketball, she started the season in January, the start of conference play. BYU allows Alohi Robins-Hardy to play both sports at the same time. For example, this season she has played in four of BYU basketball games with a 3 point + scoring average. I don’t think Coach Beeman liked that idea at all since Adolpho was the tallest center available to her and the team had a difficult time against tall and burly front lines last year. My guess and it is a guess is that Coach Beeman did not like the idea of having two players not being available for almost half the season. I THINK (I don’t know) this is the reason why Hawaii would not accept Robin-Hardy’s condition that she would have to play in both sports to sign with Hawaii. BYU accepted; Hawaii didn’t. Since Robins-Hardy is not a basketball starter, I don’t know if she was or was not available to play in all ten matches because of conflicts in schedules. Of course, BYU’s Jennifer Hamson solved that problem by redshirting a season in volleyball and concentrated solely on basketball last season.
21. false. and i bet youre the knave who always thinks uh is always fodder to u-dub eh? washington had to fight harder to defend their home court from hawai’i with a punch out, not a bad sweep like byu did last year. hawai’i ultimately lost the siege but did stung washington plenty like bees. nebraska did overall performance-wise worse than hawai’i except were able to punch/sunder off the block which was alone enough to make the difference. uw tried to scare na wahine but failed to do so. they may kill our lady bows but they never scared them.
I’m gonna pick the two underdogs for the final – Penn St/BYU. Riding with the two setters – Micah Hancock and Alohi Robins-Hardy. You see Micah’s Harley-biker dad? I am going to take a wild guess she doesn’t have a boyfriend. Well one that dad doesn’t know about. I wasn’t a Penn St fan until the Penn St – Wisconsin match. Russ Rose might get the best players, but he molds them into a team.
AVCA D1 National COY:
Shawn Olmstead of BYU should get it.
AVCA D1 National FOY”
Should come down between Florida’s Rhamat Alhassan (MB) and Oregon State’s Mary-Kate Marshall (OH) … but this is a category that I never get right so it will probably be given to a player I’ve never heard of. Lol.
AVCA D1 National POY:
It is not written in stone but it is nonetheless accepted that the NPOY should lead her team to the Final Four (thus eliminating Washington’s Vansant from consideration).
Prime candidates from the Final Four teams are:
BYU: Jennifer Hamson (RS) and Alexa Gray (OH)
PSU: Micha Hancock (Setter) and Ali Frantti (OH)
Texas: Haley Eckerman (OH) and Khat Bell (MB)
Stanford: Inky Ajanaku (MB) and Madi Bugg (Setter) … If Merete Lutz (MB)wasn’t a RS Frosh, I would have included her name.
Think the bottom line is Robins-Hardy wanted to go away.
Don’t know how much Beeman or Shoji wanted her. But neither had a scholarship and, if she had wanted to play both, she would have had to be on basketball.
Adolpho was on volleyball scholarship this season, expected to go back to basketball 2015-16.
27. Somehow, I’m thinking that Eckerman will get it…
Cindy you are wrong. Alohi did not get an offer from UH. She would have stayed home. Know your facts. Like Mariota. UH did not offer a scholie.
30. Cindy just said neither Beeman or Shoji had a scholie. But since she wanted to play both she had to go on a basketball scholie… and again Cindy said there was none to give out. You cant offer a scholie if you have nothing to offer.
22. You may have a different view of what it means to dominate, but I go by the stats: UW outhit UH .273 to .088 (Taylor at .054, Olevao at -.111, Magill at .000, Greeley at .057), UH outblocked 15.5 to 6. Home court advantage had zero effect on wearing down UH; UW’s superior play and physicality are the reasons. UH played one good set, but otherwise hit .043, .070, and .045 for each of the other three sets. That is clear domination to me–you don’t need to sweep to clearly dominate, in my opinion. BTW, all the tactics you mention are precisely why UW dominated. The match was not as competitive as a 3-1 loss would suggest.
25. It is difficult to take someone seriously when he/she says Nebraska had a worse performance than UH against UW, especially when Nebraska won and UH lost. Nebraska hit for .293, far better than UH did.
UH did not have a good team this year, as compared to historical program standards. Young, inexperienced, and highly inconsistent. Nice win over Duke, but otherwise, it was a season in which UH didn’t lose to anyone it shouldn’t have lost to (I include Northridge in that assessment) but didn’t beat any ranked teams. That UH took a set off UW on UW’s home floor is an accomplishment, but overall, the match was not particularly competitive.
32. Stats does measures the outside athletic pct.unfortunately their is not a statistical scale for the heart. Although UDub and many of the top mainland schools with the big bucks recruit most of the best athletes we can on a given day compete with them..Hawaii will always win the attendance battle but will never get the top all American high school recruit. All the other teams in the Stanford, Wash. Penn St. Texas, Florida, USC, etc…get the best year in year out…One day hopefully we will mix all parts of the different athletes we can get and add some heart, passion, desire, and willingness to overachieve. With that you will in time hopefully soon bring all the parts into a “contagious belief”that will surpass all the stats or accolades the other teams with all American names possess.
On another note…
I can only imagine if Hawaii kept every athlete that goes away for various purpose and carry 12-15 local girls to vie (tryouts or scholie for spots at libero, setting, backrow, or hitters. I think we recruit 5-8 big girls( 6’2″ or more )from the mainland or foreign. (More heavy local dominated team)… The local girls will breed into the “culture of Poly Pride” into the big girls we lack here on the islands…With great coaching, we will be the Penn States year in year out…. Like Mariota said, “This is to make every Poly kid believe they can do it” Whether it be a Heisman or or a National Volleybal Title IMO
Interesting how some posters on a previous thread stated that Stanford dominated Florida. True, Stanford won 3-0, but it was hardly dominant when you consider Florida hit .343 for the match and blocks and digs were about even. In fact, both teams had nearly the same hitting percentage after the first set. Maybe it is a psychological issue where people expected a 4 or 5 set match. But the statistics suggest a much closer match than pure Stanford domination. Just an observation.
Alohi was hardly a surprise. UH did not offer anything, not even when she was in her Junior year. There were scholies then. Its like Mariota’s mom said, UH did not offer Marcus anything, even as a junior. Only when Oregon made and offer, did UH contact Marcus. Look Shoji had his hopes on Higgins from a young age. That’s fine, but in the end, Alohi as a freshman was already showing signs of greatness. I would say, that Higgins has not improved as much as she needed to really help UH win a championship. And Alohi, being placed in the starting setter role in the regional final showed that she had it all along. Debbie Lambert also comes to mind. No UH scholie and Stanford came calling. Robyn knew Alohi was going to be good and couldn’t offer anything. Higgins will have to improve a whole lot come next season or else it will be the same fate i’m afraid.
Re: 27 I said that I thought Shawn Olmstead of BYU would be named National COY, but the more I think about it the more I think John Dunning of Stanford will grab the top honors. True, he was NOT named an All-Region coach, but any coach who takes his/her team to the Elite Eight (I believe) automatically become a candidate for NCOY.
32 and 35. seems to me your definition of whether one dominates or not is all about their hitting pct. percentages isnt volleyball. it is about taking one set at a time and dominating is about stopping your opponent cold. you could ‘outhit’ your opponent and still lose the match. nebraska did worse than uh as in ‘overall’ performance because hawai’i never got aced, never had ball handling errors, and minimized their service errors. you can argue nebraska did better than uh because they won but without the performance uh did in everything else, that obviously came back to haunt nebraska the next day with byu.
#36. Think your timetable is a bit off. I was hoping Alohi would stay home too, after her performance bounced back her senior year.
But, I believe Hawaii had Uiato as a setter (a junior heading into her senior year) when Higgins committed fairly early with Nikki in their junior years (when Alohi was a soph.). And, in the following class (this year’s freshmen), the concentration was on OH and MB – with Hartong, et. al. departing (and as it turned out Vorster). Add to that, Alohi needed to come in on a BB scholarship as she wants play both sports & Beeman was not going down that path again.
30. Please read comments before responding and telling someone to ‘know their facts.’ What I wrote:
Think the bottom line is Robins-Hardy wanted to go away.
Don’t know how much Beeman or Shoji wanted her. But neither had a scholarship and, if she had wanted to play both, she would have had to be on basketball.
robins-hardy is a gamer. it’s even more incredible to believe that match against nebraska in the regional finals of the ncaa tournament … was her first collegiate start at setter.
she made big plays on defense and blocking, had great composure and court presence. her setting wasn’t perfect. but that’s where her composure stepped in. if there was mis-play or mis-set, she didn’t let it bother her, she’d step up and deliver on the next.
she delivered a nice high, hittable set to her middles, and had consistent location on her back set to the right pin and D set where her main weapon (hamson) was. … sets that hawaii was sorely lacking this year. (here’s hoping higgins — or even koelsch — finds that consistency on these sets…)
i’ll weigh in on the “who dominated who” debate. it’s kind of an interesting/fun debate…
hawaii-uw — hawaii hung with uw until almost the middle of the 3rd set. after that uw raised their game (as we kinda knew they would). i’d say uw dominated the last 1 and a half sets. by then, they’d figure out that hawaii had no consistent middle attack. adolpho was effective, but hawaii didn’t go to her nearly enough. and really, uw was probably fine with adolpho swinging away on a handful of sets, if it meant their block could concentrate on shutting/slowing down the outsides, which they did.
florida-stanford — stanford dominated florida. yeah, i would use that word. with all due respect to maverick, i humbly disagree with him … florida may have hit .300+ … but stanford hit .400 plus, against a top ten team. and really it was the “eye test” that did it for me. watching that match, stanford was just in such control of the match. the game scores matter too. set one (25-17) wasn’t close. set 2 was closer (25-22), but stanford controlled it. and set 3 (25-21), the score looked closer than it was.
Cindy per Mary her mom, Alohi didn’t want to go away intially. UH made no offer during her Freshman, Soph., Junior year even though she was helping Kamehameha to championships. Only in her senior did UH offer a preferred walk on. Its a shame UH didn’t give Alohi the Aloha she got from BYU. Another reason why UH will never get another championship. UH had the advantage with Alohi.
I don’t give a hoot if you’re close with her family or not. that’s just the way the cookie crumbles sometimes. you get some great athletes and you lose some to other schools. keep in mind we had kyra goodman, higgins and uiato last year. nobody knew kyra was gonna retire from volleyball so it made no sense to have another setter on the roster when you need to focus on other needs.
yes, she had a great match against nebraska but I’m sorry, IMO shes not the next misty May lauren carlini or micha Hancock that you’re playing her out to be.
we’re focusing on one athlete. there are always going to be local players that got away. there’s only so many spots on a roster. only so many schollies …
at the same time, hawaii has had more than their fair share of the top local athletes … kamano, danielson, kahumoku …
the recruiting cycle and timing has to be right too. recruiting isn’t just based on who’s good and who do we want … it’s also based on what do we need. of the scholarship players that came in this year, who would we give up? greeley, maglio, huff … all were needed to bolster the OH and Middle positions. kahakai is a good get. koelsh was a last minute addition, due to the change in the setting depth. by that time the need for a backup occurred, robins-hardy was already committed to byu.
sometimes you just have to recruit the players and bring them in, and work your butt off to develop them. was setting a weak spot this year? sure… but i have hope yet that higgins can develop into a more consistent and serviceable setter. she came in with all the credentials that hawaii normally looks for in a setter. let’s not forget that many fans were excited by her recruitment. she can raise her game yet. it didn’t all align for her this year. but i have faith.
42. The difference in hitting percentage for the Stanford-Florida match was the first set. Otherwise, both teams hit for nearly the same pct. Also, the hitting lines were 47-12-102 and 50-9-100. Stanford had three more kills, three fewer errors and two fewer attempts. Not exactly dominating in my view. While I respect your eye test, I prefer to stick with the numbers on this one. But fun to debate.
thanks, maverick — and i guess part of my point was that we shouldn’t limit ourselves to just one thing (stats, for instance) when gauging how the teams did. let’s look at all the different aspects, like the match and set scores, and also your own observation of the play. sometimes matches can look even on paper, but when you actually watch the play, it’s more telling. stanford controlled that match start to finish.
43. 44. Let’s be civil, OK? regardless if you insert symbols instead of letters, it’s still rude. Just didn’t get caught in the filter.
45. thanks for getting to all that. Hawaii has gotten its share of top athletes in volleyball but sometimes the recruiting cycle does bite back. such as the case when all scholarships are spoken for and the best that can be offered is preferred walk-on. And sometimes coaches take a chance on athletes that don’t live up to expectations.
It is sad that UH has offered walk-on status to some of the best local athletes, most often in football, for decades. UH’s in-state tuition may be more reasonable for local families but it’s still an expense. Players should not be faulted when deicing to go where they are valued, which means a scholarship.