Volleyball Thread

[Galway Eagle]

Can someone explain the spring games to me?

[wadesworld]

Can someone explain the spring games to me?

Basically scrimmages.  They take on all different forms.  Some of them are at local club teams' practice facilities to get those teams interested in the college team and/or as a recruiting tool.  Some are mini tournaments where you'll have 4 schools come together at one location and play a round robin or play 2 of the 3 other teams.  Some are played at a neutral site.  Most will have no official scorebook or stat keeping, some will be best of 3 (more when there are multiple teams playing multiple matches), some best of 5.  Some will have coaches stopping play and coaching in the middle of the match.  Etc.

Basically "secret scrimmages" that aren't as much of a secret as Marquette makes them.  I believe all teams get 4 spring dates to play, and you can only travel a certain amount of miles from your campus (so Marquette couldn't just play Stanford for the fun of it...although Wisconsin just played 2 at Hawaii so not sure if that's considered Wisconsin's "foreign trip" since teams also get that every 4 years if they choose to, or if Hawaii gets an exception since they're outside of the mileage radius for everyone).

Most teams get most of their roster playing time, mix up lineups, etc.  Basically what you see from basketball's secret scrimmages.  Just because an Owens is Marquette's 3rd best player in a secret scrimmage doesn't mean he'll be a highly effective player as a freshman at Marquette.  Same deal with most of these spring matches.

[Galway Eagle]

Basically scrimmages.  They take on all different forms.  Some of them are at local club teams' practice facilities to get those teams interested in the college team and/or as a recruiting tool.  Some are mini tournaments where you'll have 4 schools come together at one location and play a round robin or play 2 of the 3 other teams.  Some are played at a neutral site.  Most will have no official scorebook or stat keeping, some will be best of 3 (more when there are multiple teams playing multiple matches), some best of 5.  Some will have coaches stopping play and coaching in the middle of the match.  Etc.

Basically "secret scrimmages" that aren't as much of a secret as Marquette makes them.  I believe all teams get 4 spring dates to play, and you can only travel a certain amount of miles from your campus (so Marquette couldn't just play Stanford for the fun of it...although Wisconsin just played 2 at Hawaii so not sure if that's considered Wisconsin's "foreign trip" since teams also get that every 4 years if they choose to, or if Hawaii gets an exception since they're outside of the mileage radius for everyone).

Most teams get most of their roster playing time, mix up lineups, etc.  Basically what you see from basketball's secret scrimmages.  Just because an Owens is Marquette's 3rd best player in a secret scrimmage doesn't mean he'll be a highly effective player as a freshman at Marquette.  Same deal with most of these spring matches.

Gotcha thanks. So looking at roster for these games isn't going to give me much of indication of whether players stay or leave. Or if the couple transfers in are going to be legit. Darn.

[wadesworld]

Gotcha thanks. So looking at roster for these games isn't going to give me much of indication of whether players stay or leave. Or if the couple transfers in are going to be legit. Darn.

Yeah pretty much not.  A lot of women's volleyball transfers do happen between the fall and spring semesters for the reason that there is a spring season and they can get into their new programs and develop, grow chemistry as a team, etc.  But with coaching changes and being in the gym and maybe seeing a player's role, there are transfers in the summer.

[Galway Eagle]

Creightons coach stepping down

[wadesworld]

For any volleyball fans out there, this podcast just had Marv Dunphy on as their guest.  I could listen to him tell stories all day.

Over a 3 or 4 year period we were fortunate enough to have some combination of John Speraw, Chris and Karl McGown, Marv, and Marv's assistants at Pepperdine at the time (his daughter Alex was his grad assistant, David Hunt, and Jonathan Windor) come out and put on Gold Medal Squared clinics for our club when I was coaching.  Leading up to the one that Marv and his assistants were running, along with Chris McGown, I had heard Marv was kind of standoffish.  Turned out, it couldn't be further from the truth.  I'm guessing it was because Pepperdine was extremely expensive, a dry campus, and you only had 4.5 scholarships to work with so Marv knew he just didn't have a chance to land certain kids when recruiting, so he didn't even bother recruiting a number of players who were good enough to play at that level.

At any rate, they came out and did the clinic and that could have very easily just been the end of the story.  Not with Marv (or Chris).  A couple of our players had made an unexpected run to the Final Four their freshman year at Loyola so some of the coaches were going out to UCLA, where it was being hosted.  Marv got wind of this and called our club director, who worked in sales at Burghardt Sporting Goods, and he called Burghardt's front desk where some high school kid working the register answered and called back to her saying, "There's a Marv Dunphy on the phone for you?"  She of course said go ahead and transfer that, and he invited us to visit them at Pepperdine on the Friday between the Semifinals and Finals.  We spent a couple hours in his office with him and the assistants and were planning to get lunch with them, but there were wildfires going on and he finally gave in to his daughter giving him updates on their home when the retired Malibu fire chief called and told him he needed to get back to his house.

Years later when they named the court after him, his daughter, who I've stayed in touch with, said Marv wanted to know my address.  A week or so later I had a package from him with a hat they were giving out at the match and a hand written note about gratitude and how I have been a part of his journey and he is grateful for our relationship.  Just a great guy with some amazing stories.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjxB2WFRGi0&list=PLcce6zgwXGMIUFBfbvMru3bKu2SiGSYTK

[Galway Eagle]

Ugh. New era not exactly a great start. Had hoped ring and bray would be enough to keep the team semi relevant.

[Mr. Nielsen]

I didn't have losing to Ball State on the bingo card.

[wadesworld]

I'm skeptical on the coach.

[MU82]

Do we have any chance at all against the Weasels?

[wadesworld]

Do we have any chance at all against the Weasels?

Zero.

[Galway Eagle]

Zero.

Honestly a bit disappointed they chose to run back the Fiserv game in a year that was clearly going to be a big transition for us. Like at least previous years we had a chance to be competitive, but this ain't it.

I'm skeptical on the coach.

As someone who knows significantly less about volleyball than you can you enlighten me what you're seeing that are coaching issues vs talent? My wife and I were chalking it up to talent but neither of us know enough.

[Billy Hoyle]

Honestly a bit disappointed they chose to run back the Fiserv game in a year that was clearly going to be a big transition for us. Like at least previous years we had a chance to be competitive, but this ain't it.

As someone who knows significantly less about volleyball than you can you enlighten me what you're seeing that are coaching issues vs talent? My wife and I were chalking it up to talent but neither of us know enough.

Was the Fiserv match set up before Theis left? I would imagine the contract was signed well before that.

I see it as a talent issue. There were significant losses due to graduation with Anchante, Reitsma, Hamilton, and Naber. Then the loss of Long, Clifford, and the one that really hurt, Berezowitz. Mendoza was hired after the transfer portal window so he didn't have time to recruit the top available transfers. It's a young team, I don't expect much success this season and not because of coaching.

[MU82]

A talent issue IS a coaching issue.

[wadesworld]

Honestly a bit disappointed they chose to run back the Fiserv game in a year that was clearly going to be a big transition for us. Like at least previous years we had a chance to be competitive, but this ain't it.

As someone who knows significantly less about volleyball than you can you enlighten me what you're seeing that are coaching issues vs talent? My wife and I were chalking it up to talent but neither of us know enough.

I'm guessing every year is going to be at the Kohl Center/Fiserv going forward.  Women's volleyball is getting a lot more publicity and TV time nowadays.  With it being in state and Wisconsin having such a rabid fanbase for volleyball, you can sell out an NBA sized arena every year.  While it sucks that Madison fans pack a Marquette home game, they'd pack the Al at the same ratio anyway.  Might as well make money off of their fans.

We'll see how Mendoza does going forward.  As Billy says, this year there's definitely a lack of talent.  The timing of his hire didn't help him.  I'm just not sold on him as a head coach.  No offense to Marquette's volleyball program, but when you leave an SEC job for a Big East job in volleyball, especially one that isn't Creighton, it seems fairly likely you're running from that job rather than running to the job you're taking.

Mendoza coached at South Carolina for 7 years.  He went to the NCAA Tournament his first 2 seasons with the previous staff's roster, and then made just 2 NCAA Tournaments in the next 5 years.  I believe he had 5 players who made an All Conference team in 7 years at SC.  2 were holdovers from the previous staff, one was a grad transfer, and one was originally committed to NC State before a coaching change.  Also, he was an assistant under Booth at Creighton.  I'm guessing she knew her plans to leave Creighton for a while, so if she thought super highly of Mendoza I'm guessing he would've gotten that job.

Apparently the athletic department was prioritizing head coaching experience.  I think that unnecessarily limited the candidate pool.  I think Mendoza is a pretty low ceiling guy.  I don't think he'll achieve what Theis did at Marquette, and it seemed like the trajectory of the program was continuing to go up from Bond to Theis and this, to me, changes it in the wrong direction.  I thought they had a chance to hire a higher risk but much hire ceiling than Mendoza.  Dave Boos was a finalist for Florida's job and the players wanted him hired.  I am pretty sure he was interviewed by Marquette, has ties to Milwaukee, and has recruited at a very high level with Florida.  Matt Houk has had some success at lower levels, was an assistant at Minnesota so has experience at a high major, and has Milwaukee ties.

We'll see how it goes.  Marquette invests in the program in ways no program besides Creighton does in the Big East.  He should keep Marquette as the second best program in the BE.  But I don't see them maintaining or improving on the level they've been at with Mendoza.

[Billy Hoyle]

I'm guessing every year is going to be at the Kohl Center/Fiserv going forward.  Women's volleyball is getting a lot more publicity and TV time nowadays.  With it being in state and Wisconsin having such a rabid fanbase for volleyball, you can sell out an NBA sized arena every year.  While it sucks that Madison fans pack a Marquette home game, they'd pack the Al at the same ratio anyway.  Might as well make money off of their fans.

A few years ago a buddy and his wife bought all of the outstanding tickets to the game at the Al so Bucky fans couldn't and MU would pack the house. Fiserv is a little too big to do that, but like you said, we'll take their money!


Creighton set the new indoor VB attendance record last night with 17,675 in a five-set loss against Nebraska, beating our record by a little over 600. Any chance we can pack in another 650 to Fiserv tonight?

Creighton has now played four teams in the top five, losing them all. That's ridiculous but props to them for scheduling that way.

[wadesworld]

A few years ago a buddy and his wife bought all of the outstanding tickets to the game at the Al so Bucky fans couldn't and MU would pack the house. Fiserv is a little too big to do that, but like you said, we'll take their money!


Creighton set the new indoor VB attendance record last night with 17,675 in a five-set loss against Nebraska, beating our record by a little over 600. Any chance we can pack in another 650 to Fiserv tonight?

Creighton has now played four teams in the top five, losing them all. That's ridiculous but props to them for scheduling that way.

We'll see what the crowd is like tonight.  Feels like past years there's been a bit more hype because Wisconsin is slightly down relative to their normal very high standard and this is probably the worst Marquette team in a while.

Creighton definitely schedules tough in the non-conference knowing that Marquette will be their only 3 competitive matches after mid September.  Marquette does a good job scheduling as well.  Was surprised Creighton took Nebraska to 5.  Creighton seems to be down a bit compared to previous years, but still definitely the best in the Big East.