Hi volleyball fans and welcome back to Volley Talk, the podcast created for volleyball lovers who want to dig deep into what is going on in NCAA and international volleyball.
I'm your host Sarah Pavin, I'm an Olympian, beach volleyball world champion, former Nebraska Cornhusker, and longtime pro both indoor and on the beach.
And I'm Adam Schultz, former indoor player, international volleyball coach, and stats guru.
This week was a little more straightforward than we've seen recently.
We had only one major upset of note and otherwise we're seeing teams kind of jostling for position in their respective conference rankings as we approach the end of regular season play.
We're going to take a look at one of these matches in depth.
We're going to give a little volleyball 101 class for our new volleyball fans out there.
And we will also dive into the recently announced ABCA Player of the Year semi-finalist list.
Let's get started.
To kick things off, we had signing day last week so all 2025 Fall Athlete Commits signed their letters of intent.
So huge congratulations to all the 2025 volleyball players who signed that LOI and kind of got that off their plate.
That is a very big deal.
We look forward to seeing all of you at your respective schools and talking about you soon.
Good luck in the upcoming season.
So, Kansas had a great week, which was good to see because they had a tough week last week in the state of Arizona.
So, Kansas beat TCU 3-1 and then they beat Baylor 3-0.
Last week you were asking me if Kansas was going to lose to all these teams and they made a statement.
You know, it was really good to see and I will say in the matches that they played their middles are getting more sets and they're winning matches.
It has to be clear to their staff that this is the recipe for success for them and I'm curious, you know, they're back at home.
They won those matches. The middles are running well. Is it an environment thing? Is it a visual thing of being in different gyms?
I'm curious to see if that trend continues, but they need their middles to be productive and they were.
And they beat two opponents that they needed to beat to keep their ranking.
We saw TCU who was fighting for position in that conference have not a great weekend.
They went 0-2. Obviously, they lost to Kansas, but then they ended up losing to K-State 3-0 as well.
And again, I know I'm going to sound like a broken record, but they're setting one or two players.
And those players didn't have a great week statistics wise.
They didn't hit very well and we're talking about their star, obviously, Melanie Parra and their other player, Jalen Gibson, also got a lot of sets and neither of them were particularly efficient.
And so they went 0-2 this weekend and that's going to hurt them in the long run.
So you and I watched the Kansas TCU match live. We watched the whole thing.
I thought Toyozi Anabonjo from KU had a great match, definitely, as you said, turned things around from the Arizona road trip.
Reese Patak, surprisingly, had pretty terrible numbers again.
Yeah, she still hasn't found her footing.
And I'm curious if that's a freshman traveling school, figuring it out, or if there's just something going on physically that we don't know about.
She didn't look the same as she did two weeks ago when we watched her.
And I thought she looked spectacular and I thought, you know, great things coming for this young freshman.
But she needs to find a way to get back, connecting with the setter and scoring on her attacks.
She's still blocked pretty well.
There's a big difference from high school and club to the college game. Teams are doing their homework.
Reese Patak had a couple great weeks there, so obviously her opponents have taken note. They're game planning for her now.
You can't just do what you've always done because teams are ready.
So I think there is a little bit of growing pains there.
But the big point is that one of the two middles had a standout performance and that made a huge difference.
I agree with you.
Melanie Parra is doing everything for TCU.
And while I wouldn't say that she played poorly because of the load that she is expected to carry,
the numbers and the results that she has kind of delivered this week isn't going to cut it for TCU.
She is everything to that team.
Well, the biggest thing in the Kansas match was the number of errors she hit.
She had 13 of the team's 26 errors.
And that is that makes for a tough outing.
And in fairness to her, she is expected to clean up all of the garbage.
She gets set in the situations where everybody knows there's going to be a three-man block and she has to go up.
She gets served a ton. They move her around.
She's got a heavy load in that program.
And you're not going to have a career match every night. And it was tough for her.
To be fair, I have not let other players in her position off the hook.
I have been critical of different go-to hitters from top programs for the same situation.
I will say I don't think she's put in a position to be effective as often as some of those other players are that we've talked about.
The setting was inconsistent, I thought.
And you could see it particularly when TCU was trying to run the middle.
First of all, I don't even think they tried to run the middle until the end of set two.
Correct.
And then every time that they tried to run it, there was absolutely no connection there.
No, it was hard to watch the middles coming in.
And I thought the passing was OK. Like there were opportunities to run it.
And Kansas, credit to them, they picked that up. They made an adjustment.
They had double blocks outside on both pin hitters all night.
This was a really big weekend for Kansas. They played two ranked opponents.
This was the part of their schedule that you and I were kind of questioning what was going to happen.
They responded. They're going to finish close to, if not at the top of the conference.
And this was the response they needed going into the tournament.
And kudos to them for figuring it out, for getting their middle back in, getting a balanced attack.
I think this puts them in the best place possible moving forward and getting ready for the tournament.
And TCU is going to have to get some production from someone other than Melanie Parra.
So we'll see what happens moving forward.
Florida State had a tough week this week. They had to travel to both Pitt and SMU.
And they got absolutely handled by both teams. They lost 3-0 to both.
But I'm not I don't want to talk about Florida State.
I just put up some absolutely stunning numbers this week.
It's staggering how well they're playing.
If you're Florida State and Pitt is putting up the kind of numbers that they put up against you, I'm sorry.
You're not going to win.
Pitt is the team to beat across the board in the NCAA right now.
And if they are playing well, I would say 95% of teams don't have a chance to beat them.
You've got to hope they have an off night and away you go.
And that's that's just not happening across the board.
Their hitting percentages are absolutely insane against Florida State as a team.
They went 429, 650, which is got to be some sort of world record and 385.
That's it's absurd. It's absolutely absurd how well they're playing.
And I don't care who the opposition is. Those numbers are wild.
So to translate those individuals set attack percentages into the full match, we're talking hitting 473 as a team.
You don't lose if you can do that.
You do not lose if you do that.
Unless you miss every serve.
Unless you get aced 58 times in between those attacks you're taking.
But it's not happening.
It's you know what what they're doing is really impressive to watch.
They are working as a team.
And I think one of the other things that impresses me most is just their set distribution.
Everybody is involved. Everybody is chipping in.
Everybody scoring points. It's a team effort.
And those those are the teams that win.
They're not reliant on one player and you can have an off night and the team can still win.
It's impressive.
Well, then they followed that up with their match against Miami where it was a similar story.
They hit over 400 as a team again.
And we're not talking like they're beating bottom of the conference teams like that.
Florida State ranked 22 in the country.
Miami just upset Stanford.
Those are two teams that are in the mix in the ACC that they are dismantling like this.
People have got to be taking note and trying to figure out what the heck do we do to stop them.
And I think the one thing we talk about and you were you were alluding to people getting the book on a team and on a hitter.
When you have all of those weapons, who do you focus on?
What do you do? And as a staff for Pitt, you know, OK, they're focusing on this player.
Talk to your setter. Hey, we're going to overload and give them a few more balls.
We're going to make sure we run the pipe.
There's just so many options for a setter to use and B for the team to figure out how to adjust the game plan.
It's just hard to stop everybody.
This week, we saw Florida beat Missouri 3-2 in a battle between the number two and three ranked teams in the SEC.
This was our feature match of the week.
So we'll talk about it a bit more later, but it was a big win and a big match in that conference.
And we haven't talked a ton about SEC, so I'm excited to dive into this one in a little more depth later on.
The last sort of highlight of the week that we wanted to talk about was the ABCA announced their 14 semifinalists for the National Player of the Year Award.
If you missed that, the ABCA released a couple of videos on Instagram announcing the players.
It was very interesting.
So here is the list in case you didn't see that announcement.
All right. We have Kendra Waite from Creighton.
We have Kennedy Martin from Florida, Cameron Turner from Kansas, Bergen Reilly from Nebraska,
Lexi Rodriguez from Nebraska, Eva Hudson from Purdue, Cami Miner from Stanford,
Elena Scott from Louisville, Jess Merzik from Penn State, Olivia Babcock from Pitt,
Rachel Fairbanks from Pitt, Tori Stafford from Pitt, Melanie Parra from TCU, and Sarah Franklin from Wisconsin.
So looking at this list, Adam, were there any surprises to you that you look at them and you're like, why are they here?
So I think this list is interesting.
And one of the questions I had having not dove into an NCAA or ABCA player of the year list is what is the criteria for making this list?
That's a fantastic question.
It's definitely not completely.
It's not completely statistics based.
The person with the top statistics doesn't always win.
So it has to do with the strength of your team, how they perform over the entirety of the season.
And I do honestly think that making the final four adds a ton of weight.
So if you're performing consistently well from start to finish of the season and your team is very good, there's a good chance that you'll be on this list.
It's about consistency.
It's about posting great numbers and being that integral part of a very high performing team all season long.
OK, so it seems like there's a lot of criteria that you can use to choose people for this list.
And I think everybody that they've put, the 14 players, you can make a case for all of them to be there.
Some of the notable ones are ones that I would disagree with.
I haven't watched Creighton play, so I can't have an opinion on Kendra Wade.
But you're the fifth ranked team in the country.
Somebody from your team has got to go.
And her stats compared to the other setters on the list are quite high and she's got better attacking numbers.
So I'm assuming she's very active in the offense.
Kennedy Martin scores a ton of points and carries Florida in a big way.
Cameron Turner, this is an interesting one for me personally.
I know I've said this before.
I don't love her set selection and the way she runs in offense.
And that's a personal opinion from watching her.
Her numbers are very good across the board.
Kansas has had a pretty good season and they don't necessarily, they're a very balanced team when they're playing well.
And so it's hard to pick a team or player from them to put on the list.
And so I think the person, the setter running the offense makes sense and given her statistics.
I mean, you've got five players from Nebraska and Pitt.
All of them are deserving.
You're probably going to see them in the final four.
So they're leaving themselves open to kind of see who has the best tournament.
I get that. They're all very deserving.
I was surprised to see Alaina Scott on the list.
I personally really liked her.
I thought she was the backbone and the energy of the team.
She does have, I believe, the highest digs per set in the NCAA for the top four conferences.
So statistically, she's good.
But I liked her for some of her intangibles and I wasn't sure that that was going to get recognized by a selection committee.
So good for her.
And I was surprised to see her on the list.
I think the thing that we see with these AVCA lists is they definitely use them as a way to shout out teams that have done well.
Do I think that all of these 14 players legitimately have a shot to win National Player of the Year?
Absolutely not.
But take Creighton, for example.
You've had a great season.
You're number five in the country.
You need to have somebody on the list.
That success cannot be ignored.
But you're not playing in a particularly strong conference.
So even if Creighton does happen to make the final four, do I think that Kendra Waite is going to win Player of the Year?
No.
So you kind of see some nods being given to programs and athletes that in all likelihood won't win, but they want to highlight the success that a team has had regardless.
My next question for you is, do you think there's anybody missing from the list?
Well, I think there's a position missing from the list.
An entire position, you guys.
I am floored that no middles made this list.
And I, listen, I understand you play half the match, so the Liberos, FYI.
Well, technically the Liberos play the full match because they're replacing both middles.
But they're only doing two, maybe three skills.
So the same argument could be made for middles who are performing two, maybe three skills.
And I get that a middle is not going to most likely win Player of the Year.
Falouk Akenrod and Woe, ladies and gentlemen, it has happened many times in the past where middles have won.
I'm not trying to contradict you.
I'm highlighting the point.
Middles need to be included.
I agree.
And I think there should have been a couple on this list.
There are some middles who are having outstanding seasons.
Now, we don't see any middles this year who are leading a block statistic and an offensive statistic,
which I think probably gets people's attention more.
But I mean, a couple of people who could have made this list, Raiden Colvin from Purdue, she's getting 1.5 blocks a set.
She's got 143 blocks on the year, hitting 346 and 227 points.
I mean, she's having a great year.
You could make an argument for her being there.
I think that Bree Kelly from Pitt and I think Andy Jackson from Nebraska are off the list solely because they already have so many people from their team on there.
I would argue that Andy Jackson is maybe the most important hitter on Nebraska just because their outside hitters in the right sides are statistically similar.
I think this kind of ties into that statement you made, though, about a team that is very well balanced.
You mentioned that Kansas runs a very well balanced offense.
So who the heck do you pick?
Oh, let's give it to the setter.
You see the same thing with Nebraska.
Yes, they are one of the top teams in the country, but they are very deliberate about running a very balanced offense.
So that kind of ties into the same thing.
How do you highlight a hitter when everybody is getting set the distribution?
You have to you give it to the setter.
I don't.
I agree that Andy Jackson needs to be on the list, but I think it definitely ties into the equal distribution you see from them.
Yeah, I completely agree with you.
But I think the other thing too, middles don't get credit for the little things they do.
They don't get credit for holding a middle and creating a one on one.
They don't get credit for having a sealed block so the Liberals can get digs.
There's a lot of things that you really have to watch a player and watch a team to understand the value that the middles bring outside of their statistics.
And I think that in this list, that was not considered.
I mean, the other one is Sammy Francis at Stanford is having a great year.
1.4 blocks a set.
She's attacking well.
I think she's a pivotal part of that team as well.
So I was a little disappointed, I would say, because I'm a middle fan that we didn't see a middle on the list.
I think that was a huge oversight.
I couldn't really think of any individual players outside of that entire missing position.
But one, I had to.
OK, my player that I was like, how is she not included was Madison Skinner from Texas.
Completely agree.
And Texas got the snub as a whole.
I understand that they have dropped some matches that they don't typically drop this season.
That is fine.
But you're talking about a back to back national champion.
And Madison Skinner, despite those losses, has put up some great numbers even in those games.
And she is an outstanding athlete.
I could not believe that she wasn't included.
I agree with you.
And the other one that I would say is Elnaudy from Kansas.
She's put up really good numbers.
Her efficiency isn't as high as some of the other hitters on the list.
But if we're talking about importance to her team, she does it all for Kansas, has been very consistent,
and has been the foundation of that team, I would say.
My personal opinion is I would have given it to her over Turner.
Very interesting.
I've been impressed with her too.
So I can get behind that statement.
Overall, very interesting to take a look.
My gut is that someone from Pitt is going to take it home if they make the final four.
Even if they don't, they have a great shot.
But that is where I'm leaning right now.
But only time will tell.
And we will find out soon enough.
As Adam mentioned earlier, our feature match this week is Florida versus Missouri.
Coming into this match, Missouri was number two and Florida was number three in the SEC.
So this match had very big implications.
And it delivered, I thought.
Yeah, I thought the game was great.
It was entertaining.
Like you said, we haven't watched a lot of volleyball from this conference.
So to get a feel for, I don't want to say the differences, but what the level is, what the top teams look like.
Missouri hasn't been ranked before.
They came in ranked now that they've been playing really well.
I think that that's absolutely insane.
Missouri has been sitting at number two in the SEC for at least a couple of weeks now.
And they just got ranked this past week at number 25.
Isn't that great?
Like Kentucky, unranked Missouri, then Florida, then Texas.
How are you sandwiched in between all these ranked teams and nobody is giving you any respect?
Well, it's interesting watching Missouri play.
I really like their game.
But this comes back to something we said earlier.
They're really balanced.
All of their players are pulling in the same direction.
They score well as a unit.
They play well as a group, but they're not flashy.
They don't have any real standouts.
And so I think it's easy to just go, oh, it's Missouri.
They're consistent.
But there's no there's nothing that draws you in unless you're really watching how good they are.
I must say we watched Missouri a couple of times this season.
I really like their setter, Marina Crownover.
She played her freshman year at Texas, transferred to Missouri.
And I think that she is kind of the difference maker for them this season.
She seems like a great leader.
You see her continuously communicating with her teammates between plays.
She is stern when she needs to be.
She is motivating them.
But I also really like how she runs her offense.
It's like the mental and the physical side of her game look great.
The word that comes to mind when I watch her play is gritty.
She just she has that presence.
And she just puts her head down and work.
And I will say I bet Texas is really wishing that she was still there at this point, given what's happening.
She has an attitude in that Texas match, which I loved, loved, loved.
But she is definitely carrying and riding the ship, so to speak, for Missouri when things get a little rocky.
They hammered Florida in that first set.
It wasn't even close.
And you know who else I really like is the right side, number four, Jordan Illiff.
First of all, we talked about them not having any standouts, but her serve stands out.
It's incredible to watch her make that serve.
And she puts teams in so much trouble.
It's fun to watch.
I think during that match they were saying she's number three in the NCAA in aces, total aces or aces per set or something.
Obviously, that may have changed since they were actually playing on Friday.
But she is up there and I love a lefty spin serve from zone five.
That thing is deadly.
You know, the other stat that I found out that I was shocked to hear is at the time of that match, Missouri had the most kills per set in the NCAA out of any other team.
And that that is a testament to a the center, but be the balance of their offense.
You watch them play and it's like, yeah, that's that makes sense.
Counter to that stat, however, they were also ranked two hundred and ninety first in the NCAA in blocks per set.
So they need to be delivering from the attack category.
Yeah. And they actually to their credit, the reason this match was so close was because they did block well against Florida.
They didn't have any solo blocks, but they had 22 block assists, which translates to 11 total blocks.
Or they got the same number of blocks as Florida, which was why it was close.
And that's something they're going to need to kind of figure out if they want to play with the best of the best.
I also really liked their libero Maya Sands.
I actually thought it was a libero duel because the Florida libero was very good as well.
Ellie McKissick recorded her two thousandth career dig during that match.
That is a massive milestone.
But I agree, I liked both liberos.
And the question I had as the match progressed is why the heck does Missouri keep serving Ellie McKissick?
That was a bit of a head scratcher for me, too.
I'm not sure if they were trying to either wear her down or get the ball to come from a specific spot based on something they saw.
But that one I also didn't figure out.
I mean, McKissick was receiving in zone one a lot, which I assume they were trying to make it as difficult as possible to set the ball to Kennedy Martin on the right side.
As a setter, if you're turning to phase zone one, the ball is coming over your shoulder, then you're setting it back again.
It's not the most comfortable situation.
Is it like win or lose defining?
I don't think so.
But that was really my only thought.
But they were also serving her at the end when she was in zone six.
So I wasn't really sure what the strategy there was.
I mean, it was a great match to watch up until the fifth set, which didn't go well for Missouri.
But this is this to me is the key difference.
And it's the thing that Missouri lacks that allows them to be an absolute top tier team is somebody who can get a kill when they need it.
They have to be balanced.
They have to be running offense in terms of having ball distribution and Florida.
Well, they can set Kennedy Martin whenever they need a point.
And I believe she had eight points in the fifth set alone.
I think she went into the fifth set having 24 kills and she ended the match with 32.
Yeah, that's insane.
So when you have a player of that caliber who just goes off for a set, there really isn't anything you can do besides get aces.
And they're not the strongest blocking team.
So shutting down those big players who are tall, have high contact points, they're just not capable.
I actually have this written down.
I was like, I personally think this might be a controversial statement.
I do think that Missouri is the better overall team.
But building off of what you said, they do not have a stud player.
And even though Missouri might be better overall, Florida has the stud player in Kennedy Martin.
That makes a huge difference.
Yeah.
When you can get a point every second set, every third set from a player, you just you have an out.
It relieves the pressure off everybody else.
It gives the setter an out.
You know, you can go to that player and you don't have to be as consistent.
I will say I did appreciate that Florida wasn't relying on Kennedy Martin early.
That's probably why they lost 25-15 in the first set.
But you could tell in set one, they were trying to get everybody going.
They were running the middle a lot.
They were running everyone.
It wasn't effective.
It wasn't scoring.
But I appreciated the idea and the kind of game plan that they had set in place there of like,
let's just try to find a rhythm with everyone.
Kennedy is there.
We know she is there.
We'll rely on her if we need to.
But we want everybody to kind of be involved early.
And I mean, it didn't work.
It did not work.
Because so they set their middles early in that match.
But when you look at the numbers over the course of the match, the middles got 36 sets total.
And there were three of them that played compared to the 60 sets that Martin got and the 36 that Isabel Martin got.
Again, I'm not saying it was effective.
But I could appreciate what they were trying to do.
And they know that they're going to need that to work to be successful against the bigger teams.
Because we're starting to see it as we get close to the tournament.
There's video teams are locked in.
They're playing better defense.
They're honed in.
Everybody's getting ready to compete at the highest level.
And those teams who rely on one player to score are not going to be successful in the long run.
You have to have at least some semblance of a balanced attack.
Building off of Kennedy Martin, this might be another controversial statement.
I guess we're just full of them today.
I think that she hits better from the back row than the front row.
She doesn't hit extreme angles from the front row.
She tried a couple sharp cross swings in the front row and missed wide.
So she's not going up and just punishing teams with the angles.
She's punishing teams with how high she contacts the ball.
And quite frankly, I think the angle she hits out of the back row are better.
I agree with you.
I think what I saw was she jumps horizontally better than she jumps vertically.
And so when she was in the front row, I saw her taking the ball behind her head on several occasions.
And while she still makes high contact, she doesn't have the vision and the angles when the ball gets behind her,
which is why I think she attacked better out of the back row.
So if she can wait a little bit and the setter can keep the ball in front of her,
she'll be just as deadly in the front row.
But it's something that they'll need to get figured out, especially as they play against bigger and better blocking teams.
She actually set a Florida record for most individual kills in a single match with 32.
So that's a big deal.
I mean, she had a phenomenal match.
Oh, she was like unstoppable.
She hit 450.
32 kills hitting 450.
Which is wild.
Wild, especially when you're getting set so many balls when everyone knows you're getting set.
Outstanding.
As much as I loved Kennedy Martin's performance, I did not love Florida's outsides.
I thought the Florida outsides were outperformed by Michael Vernon and Jordan Illiff.
Janet Demere from Missouri was a little up and down, but I thought in the outside hitter battle, I thought Missouri was better.
I thought that Illiff had a very good game.
Vernon was a little up and down to me.
She seemed intimidated by the block at times.
On the sets that they won, she came up big.
And it took her, I think, a little bit of time to figure out what to do with a blocker of Martin's size.
Now, she still played really well.
She hit 235, you know, 17 for 51.
It's a good night, but they needed her to be better specifically in the fifth set if they wanted to compete in that match.
But compared to Florida's outsides, what were you thinking?
I'll give you that.
I thought that Isabel Martin needed to have a better game.
I didn't think she was super effective.
She hit 139.
She made a whole bunch of errors.
And A.C. Fitzpatrick, I was like, she wasn't even there to me.
Like, I didn't, she played until she got injured.
I think she got injured in like the third set or something, fourth set.
But she just was not present to me.
No, I mean, she only got 18 sets.
She had five kills, five errors.
She hit zero on the night.
Like, that's not good.
Yeah, I was not impressed with Florida's outsides.
I don't know if I'm being overly critical.
I think it's tough.
I agree with your assessment for this match.
We haven't seen Florida play enough to know where the baseline is for those players.
Yeah, I'm just I'm talking about just this match.
Yeah, fair enough.
I do have a question.
I don't know if you could figure it out.
What was Florida doing with their setters?
Taylor Parks started the match.
Then they subbed in Alexis Stuckey, who played sets two, three and four and a little bit of set five.
And then they put Parks back in.
The only thing I could think of was injury or.
Well, Stuckey is returning.
Last season, she tore her ACL and MCL, but she's been back this season.
I just found it interesting that they started Parks.
They got smoked in set one and then were like, OK, let's switch it up.
Yeah, I don't I don't know the team well enough to have an answer for you.
But Parks definitely struggled to run the middle and they got hammered in the first set.
So the substitution made sense to me.
The part that didn't make sense was why she didn't finish the fifth set.
And the only thing I could think of was that maybe she wasn't setting Martin enough
because Parks came back in and just set her every ball, every ball and Martin delivered.
So maybe she has a better connection with Martin than Stuckey does.
You know, those are kind of inner workings as a coaching staff that we don't really know.
But that would be the only thing I could think of.
Fair. Yeah, I was watching the match just wondering
what the decision making process was looking like, and I could not figure it out.
But they won. So I'm sure they're happy about that.
I don't know if you have any more comments.
My last comment is I'm very curious why Missouri keeps Michael Vernon in the back row.
Her passing is not good. It is not consistent.
Even defensively, she's not picking up a ton of balls.
Normally, if a player is like that, they're kept in if they can hit from the back row
and if they can be a threat offensively, even in the back row.
But Missouri has pretty much no back row attack to speak of.
So I'm just thinking, like, what is the point?
Maybe they don't have a better passer than her.
But with the amount of DS's you have on the team, that's probably unlikely.
Your point is very well made because at the end of set three,
Michaels gave up two aces and you lose that set 27-25.
If you have a DS in there and you get that pass, that's the set you needed to win.
Well, not to mention, Alexis Stuckey went up and dumped a couple balls really deep.
And Michael Vernon was completely disengaged.
It's like she didn't even know what was happening and it landed like a yard in front of her.
Yeah, it's a good question. I'm curious. I would be curious for the answer.
So looking at this match overall, what do you summarize as being the keys to the match?
My take would be Missouri is the better overall team.
I like their offense better. I like their skill and their cohesiveness.
They lack the ability to score points in big moments from one hitter,
which is what they need to find.
For Florida, you've got a great player and somebody you're going to build your program around,
which gets you out of a lot of situations.
I think their libero is great, but they need to find a way to connect with their middles,
and they need their outsides to have a better night if they're going to compete with the top teams in the Big Ten when it comes to tournament play.
Missouri is built heavily on transfers. Florida is not.
The difference is huge there. And Florida overall is much younger.
I think the future for Florida could be bright, particularly seeing that Kennedy Martin is just a sophomore.
Alexis Stuckey is still young. Their middles are young.
They've got a bright future, which I think is so exciting.
With this win, Florida took over the number two spot in the SEC.
Kentucky is still leading the SEC.
But I'm very curious to see how things play out towards the end because Texas has kind of righted themselves.
They've been on a bit of a streak here, so it's going to be fun to watch how the SEC finishes up in the next few weeks.
We got several requests on social media and email this week to do a volleyball 101 segment.
So we're going to start implementing this into our routine.
There are so many volleyball fans out there who maybe didn't grow up playing the sport or whose children never played.
So the nuances of volleyball can be a little bit confusing.
So I personally love that more and more people are starting to watch and support volleyball.
But there is definitely a learning curve when it comes to the rules and terminology.
So we're going to do a little lesson today to help fans begin to build their volleyball knowledge repertoire
and to better understand what announcers are talking about when they're watching their favorite team play.
To get started, we're going to start basic here, but very, very important, the rotation numbers.
OK, so I want you to think about standing on the baseline facing the net.
There are six positions on the court.
Position one is the back right corner if you're facing the net.
And then we label the court counterclockwise.
So if I start in the back corner, which is position one, and I walk towards the net, that's position two.
If I start to move left across the net where the middle plays, that would be position three.
If I continue moving left where you generally see the outside hitters or the left sides, that would be position four.
So position two, three, and four are along the net.
Now we move back into the back left corner, which would be position five.
And then in the middle at the back is position six.
Now, the slightly confusing part is the numbers go in counterclockwise order.
However, the players, when they serve, rotate in clockwise order.
So if I start in position one and we are receiving and we score the point, I now go to position six.
So that's how the court is numbered, and that's how the players move around the court.
Now, you will sometimes hear announcers say, that player hit the ball to the 5'6 seam.
When you hear that, they're talking about the left section of the court coming out the baseline between, obviously, position five and position six.
So that should give you an idea of where on the court the announcers are talking about and how the players rotate on the court.
The next thing we are going to talk about is the substitution rules.
There's a big difference between international volleyball and NCAA or college volleyball.
So in international volleyball, you're allowed to do only six substitutions total in a set.
So if you go in for a player and go out, that is two subs and you are done.
You can't go back in and out however many times you want.
An in and an out is the complete max that you as one person can do.
Now they can do an in and out with three different players and that would be six.
Liberos, the people who wear a different color jersey, they do not count for the substitution total.
In college volleyball, however, there are 15 substitutions total.
So that's why you often see the same athletes switching spots three times a set.
You can go in and out however many times you want with the same partner or player on your team up to a total of 15.
So to reiterate, the big differences between international and college.
International, only six substitutions total.
College, 15.
In international volleyball, you can go in and out one time and in college it is unlimited as long as substitutions remain.
We're also going to share a couple of volleyball terms of the week.
Our term number one is ace.
Now an ace is when you score a point with your serve.
There are different ways that this can happen.
If you serve and the ball hits the ground with nobody touching it, that is an ace.
But you can also have one if you serve and it deflects off of a person's arms and nobody else can play it.
So they both end up with the same result as in the play ends with that first contact or lack thereof from the serve.
But there are different ways that it can come about.
So an ace is a point from the serve.
And the next term that sometimes you'll hear an announcer make is a pancake.
A pancake refers to when a player dives on the floor, sticks their hand out flat along the floor, and the ball hits the top of their hand.
This generally you see a lot by liberos or on ball covers or block covers.
But their hand sliding underneath the ball becomes the only thing that keeps the ball from hitting the floor.
And we refer to that as a pancake, mostly because your hand is flat and looks like a pancake.
Looking forward to this week and the matches we are most excited about that are coming up on Friday, Florida State and Georgia Tech go head to head.
We're going to have a big week in the Big Ten.
Wisconsin and Purdue are both going to have big weeks.
Purdue has Penn State on Thursday and USC on Saturday.
Wisconsin will host Minnesota on Wednesday.
And then they have the rematch that we're all looking for with Nebraska.
That is happening Saturday night.
I'm assuming we'll all be watching that match together.
I'm still sticking by what I said a few weeks ago.
I'm taking Nebraska in four.
That concludes this week's episode of Volley Talk.
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