Hawaii women’s volleyball: Weekly awards to Amber Igiede, Sky Williams
The Rainbow Wahine volleyball team received two of the three Big West weekly awards on Monday.
Congrats to Amber Igiede on BWC Freshman of the Week and Sky Williams for BWC Defensive Player of the Week.
Stunning that Norene Iosia didn’t get POW. But could be a portend of things to come tomorrow when All-Big West comes out.
Poly’s Maia Dvoracek gets POW for her big stats against UCI and Fullerton.
From the Big West:
Junior Sky Williams captured her second Big West Women’s Volleyball Defensive Player of the Week award this season as her play at the net helped Hawaii clinch sole possession of the 2019 regular season conference title.
The 6-foot-1 middle blocker tallied 10 total blocks and averaged 1.67 kills per set to help the Rainbow Wahine sweep CSUN and Long Beach State on back-to-back nights.
Williams recorded a match-high six blocks (one solo) against the Matadors while adding five kills and two digs.In the regular season finale, Williams logged four blocks while hitting .500 with seven kills and two digs.
Williams was a force at the net, and a major reason UH edged CSUN and LBSU by a combined 19.0-8.0 margin in the blocks category.
• Amber Igiede garnered her first Big West Women’s Volleyball Freshman of the Week honor, closing out the regular season with solid contributions in home sweeps of CSUN of Long Beach State.
The 6-foot-3 middle blocker averaged 2.17 kills, 1.00 blocks and 0.50 digs per set while hitting .500 in the two wins.
Igiede had a total of 13 kills with just one error as the two wins propelled UH to a 14-2 Big West record and the conference title.
She had eight kills on 14 errorless swings in the CSUN win, adding one service ace, a dig and four blocks (one solo). Against the Beach, she posted five kills and hit .400 while notching a pair of blocks and two digs.
Amber has a bright future ahead of her…Go Bows!!
What does Norene Iosia need to do to receive league recognition? Rob a bank?
Cindy, I understand your chagrin that Norene Iosia did not get Big West Player of the Week after she recorded seven aces in one week. I guess the Big West Conference appreciate more a record of kills per set average than aces per set average, so Maia got the award once again even though Norene was nominated. My question is: did Robyn Ah-Mow actually nominate Norene as Big West Player of the Year? I thought it was mentioned that Hanna was nominated for that. In my opinion Hanna certainly deserves freshman of the year award. Of was it a misunderstanding due to the confusion? If Robyn did not nominate Norene for the player of the year award, then she won’t win it. Please clarify.
They only see the total kills I guess. They don’t see what we see about Norene’s game.
Congrats to Sky – its a long overdue recognition! And to Amber, congrats for a great week. If there was a best celebration award, either Sky or Amber would have won it each and every week of the season!
Just goes to show you the diversity of Hawaii’s offense.
In stark contract to Baylor setting Pressley 82 times (she hit .171) vs Texas. This reminded me of UCSB with Ruddins and Cal Poly with Dvoracek. Unimaginative.
4. It’s true that they see only kills per set, not so much hitting percentage or even aces per set, both categories where Norene stood out. For comparison in this last week, Maia had 5.43 kills per set, hitting 33% and 0.67 aces per set; whereas, Norene hit 50% with no errors at all, eight aces in six sets which is 1.333 aces per set, exactly twice the ratio of Maia and way over the best season average of any player in the conference, let alone, the entire nation.
Norene may be overlooked, but the fact is that without Maia, Cal Poly would probably be on the bottom, not second place. She is definitely their most valuable player. As for UH, seems like Brooke van Sickle would have been the most valuable player as the team lost to Irvine at home and Cal Poly on the road without her. When she returned, UH did not lose another match since then.
6. It is true that diversified offense wins the game. As for Cal Poly setting Dvoracek so often, it is because the other two hitters, despite being seniors, can barely put down the ball. They were either dug or blocked too often. It would have helped if Maia were used as a decoy on occasion. That’s why they lose to good teams on the road and they even lost the first set to Fullerton at home. So yes, quite unimaginative. Definitely, Norene is a better setter, too, another factor that was ignored. The only setter that was ever awarded national player of the year was Misty May back in 1998 as she led her team to an undefeated season. She was very creative indeed!
too bad about Norene, but as I understand, there were some disagreement between Norene and robyn during the season, that is the reason why robyn failed to nominate her for certain accolades. nevertheless, in my mind Norene is one of the most valuable players to have ever played in Hawaii and we have had many. congrats to sky and amber, they deserved it. super excited about amber, she has the potential to be a 6 rotation player. rika and McKenna should be awarded some kind of accolade, most improved player or most inspirational. rika had a phenomenal season, she was a rock with her digs, passing and bump sets. mckeena came on strong after she started to play regularly.
Congrats to two star MBs! Wahine offense/defense/setting is not oriented to win individual player awards, but strategically earning Ws with balanced team effort like running/swimming riley team (gradually, transformed after Jolie’s injury). Each individual player of squad already earned one huge accolade, ‘BigWest Championship’, while all other BigWest star-players came short…
Compared with formula based RPI ranking, AVCA coaches voting puffed up for Big-10 (Penn St, Purdue, Michigan, Illinois) and pulled down for SEC (Texas A&M, Missouri, Kentucky, Florida). Why skewed this badly? Would it be affected for the fairness of bracketing somewhat?
Congratulations to Sky and Amber.
#8 Stop the bs please.
Should go to Baylor every year, like UCLA comes here.
Yes stop already.
Anyone heard of Dallas Directo 6’0 OH from Ft. Worth commit for 2021 ??
6. Speaking of the opposite of unimaginative…did anyone notice the Wahine didn’t play as many “diversionary” plays like the crossing play with Amber & Brooke in the last couple games? Maybe because of the tough serve/receives? Would love to see that X play of Skyler and McKenna again. That was sweet. Particularly when they all said, “What was that?!” Totally fooled UCSB!
I hope our diversified and balanced team will outlast the teams like Baylor/Pressley. If nothing else, it would be fun confusing the heck out of them!
Blunite, I hope you’re right about season ticket holders getting first crack at our hopeful regional.
GO BOWS!!! HOST! HOST! HOST!
14. https://www.fieldlevel.com/app/commitments/dallas.directo/volleyballwomen
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGLex2qsdjlm0FTjRFSCxOA
If Directo is coming, she have to be some kind of walk on. She has no Maxprep profile, no accolades and is flat out nowhere near D1 level prospect material according to her highlights.
She could be a UH Hilo recruit but FieldLevel thought UH Manoa was getting her.
I doubt she is a UH Manoa prospect.
Allie Andrew, the other recruit at senior night has offers from us, Long Beach, and Baylor Also Notre Dame was looking at her too.
Allie Andrew will raise her game playing at Hawaii, ditto Kate Lang. The coaching and the environment are unmatched,
No deep data research, just thoughts: If nothing changes this week (i.e. nobody is upset), I think the top 4 seeds will be Baylor, Wisconsin, Stanford, Pittsburgh. Texas will be the odd team out. Should Stanford or Wisconsin lose this week, then Texas gets in the top 4 seeding.
The Wahine, if they are fortunate to host (i.e. they aren’t leapfrogged by 6 teams currently ranked below them in rpi) will play matches 3 and 4 at Stanford. Face Texas in round 3 and Stanford in round 4.
Semifinal and final, 2 of the following 3: Baylor, Pittsburgh, Wisconsin .
If Texas is one of the top 4 seeds, then Wahine at Texas, and face Stanford in round 3 and Texas in round 4.
Going be tough to battle Baylor and Notre Dame to keep Allie. Our facilities and school cannot match up with either P5 schools. Baylor may offer her a chance to play both basketball and volleyball and both their programs sports are ranked.
Notre Dame is Notre Dame…nuff said.
3. where are you getting that Norene wasn’t nominated for POY or that Hellvig was?
8. no idea what you’re talking about. The Sports Information Directors (SIDs) send in the nominations then they are the ones who vote. My guess is the SIDs don’t spend a lot of time looking at things outside of the big numbers.
The coaches vote on the all-BWC honors.
This was the weekly award that is voted on by the conference SIDs.
Agreeing with 11 & 13. this is where the rumors that turn into nastiness and conspiracy theories come from.
9. the poll has nothing to do with the RPI. The poll is 60 coaches’ opinions.
15. i think the X play is something they will use but it’s also something like, what Shoji did, they don’t want postseason opponents to have too much tape on.
15. Season ticket holders have always gotten the first crack at postseason tickets. Part of the perks.
The Big West honors out around noon HST.
will update when that happens