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 the show's resident stat guy.
There was a lot of volleyball to be watched again this week, and my biggest question to all of you out there is how the heck do you choose?
So Adam and I chose to follow love and the NCAA men's side this week, and we're going to talk about some of those matches a little bit later on.
But the transfer portal continues to give us things to talk about, and if you thought three American pro volleyball leagues wasn't enough, then you'll be very happy to hear about yet another venture that is going to be starting up in January 2026.
We are very excited to discuss all of this with you today, so let's get started.
All right, for our weekly highlights and happenings, you know, we have to start out with the transfer portal because we love to begin with a little spice. PK Kong from Louisville is heading to UCLA for her grad year.
Getting out of that winter, I'll tell you what.
UCLA is probably thrilled about this because they have been struggling for the last few seasons and she's she's going to definitely add to that roster.
That's a really good pickup for them. I'm not sure. I'm curious to see how much that moves the needle. They're obviously in the Big Ten now and that's a tough conference. You're going to need more than one piece, but it makes them more competitive than they were this year.
At the end of the day, they still need to pass to be able to use her, but she will put up a big block. But so I was excited and surprised to see that I mean that kind of came out of nowhere for me but good for UCLA or miss standout Neo Washington who we watched in the NCAA tournament is leaving to head to LSU and Oregon head coach Matt Ulmer is taking over the job at Kansas following Ray
Bichard's retirement. So with this move, four players from Oregon, at least have entered the portal, including their star Mimi Collier who has committed to Wisconsin.
Let me tell you, the Wisconsin booster club has been getting after it. This year, picked up Mimi Collier rumor has it Wisconsin had the biggest offer out to left side Tory Stafford even though she decided to go to Texas so Wisconsin is retooling on the fly with big money and hopes to be competitive
again next year after losing a whole ton of seniors. Honestly, I feel like this type of situation is one that I can get behind for transferring like if you commit to a program and you're expecting to play for a certain coach.
You know the coaching staff is a big part of a decision into whether or not to go to a school so obviously these players felt a tie to Matt Ulmer and with him leaving, they, one of their big reasons for being there is probably gone so I think this situation is legit for players to leave.
I mean if we're ranking reasons to leave a program, in my opinion, the coach leaving in the atmosphere you have and your expectations would be a fair reason to reconsider where you are.
All right. I know some of you heard about this, there's been a decent amount of discord online about this, but we have the announcement of a new volleyball league called Major League volleyball that will be happening.
Apparently, in January 2026.
So here are the highlights, and then we'll kind of get into our opinions about this, because we have to of course.
The Omaha Supernovas will be leaving the PVF after the 2025 season to join Major League volleyball which will be its own league altogether which I stated starts in January 2026.
Now, there will be a minimum of 10 teams in this league. They apparently have $100 million of committed funding. They're going to have teams in Wisconsin, California, Minnesota, Indiana, Tennessee, Kentucky, Florida, Kansas, Ohio, and Washington.
These franchises will be independently owned, and they will adhere to the MLV standard and operational playbook. Now, I reached out to the media contacts at MLV to try and get some clarity on what was happening what the plan was how far along they are.
I got crickets in response, we'll see if you know they might be busy building a league from scratch from day one. All right, give me your thoughts and then I'll give you mine.
Okay, I just want to read a couple things to you.
And to our listeners, before we dive in to kind of set the tone for what MLV is kind of idea is. So, in their press release. This is what it said, Major League volleyball aims to create a premier professional pathway for women's volleyball emphasizing
grassroots development, athlete empowerment and fan engagement. The league aspires to be the top women's pro sports league in the US, offering elite competition and rivalries, excellent medical and training support top venues, and major broadcast partnerships.
I tried to keep any kind of tone out of my voice, could you tell.
So there's that. And then there's one more thing that I want to read to you guys and then we can kind of get into it. So I found this post on Kerry Walsh's Instagram, and it was one of those ones that's like a note, a screenshot and note.
In this case it was a reminder. So, okay, here's what it says.
It's as revolutionary as America itself. It's major, it's volleyball, I've played at the highest level with and against some of the world's greatest competitors in any sport. But here in the States there's never been a league ambitious enough major enough to attract the best of the best.
I'm just, I'm just doing the emphasis where it is here okay. Well, as they say, if you build it, they will come. And so, here we go.
An entrepreneurial group out of Omaha, Nebraska has done just that. First in building the Omaha Supernovas the most dynamic record setting professional volleyball team in America. And then, once the Supernovas realized that there's much more opportunity to advance and lead those same founders leveled up and started a major league.
With major league founders major league owners major league partnerships major league infrastructure and financing and a major league team in the over Omaha Supernovas already in place. The launch of the MLV will finally give volleyball league benefiting and amplifying the inherent magic and greatness of the sport itself.
Welcome to major league volleyball coming 2026.
So obviously, I don't know anybody involved in this directly, but here, here are my thoughts after doing a little bit of digging and a little bit of research on this.
I think my thoughts are clear based on the tone I just could not avoid.
Accurate. But looking looking into it so obviously the group in Omaha did a fantastic job of creating the Supernovas in the PDF, they have been successful, they have set records in terms of attendance, and they've done a really good job.
All things considered from what we've seen so far in PDF, there are lots of people who think they can do things better than everybody else. And if you have the resources to do it, you can try you can do whatever you want. My thing is the perspective here looks like it's a play to grab a growing market and own the majority of it.
Do not pretend that this is about the volleyball or the athletes or anything else. This is about you wanting to own a sports league, create your own. And you think that because your franchise is in Omaha and has done better than all of the other teams in PDF from a marketing standpoint
that you can replicate that across the country. I really hope that you have all of this infrastructure in place. I've worked at a few volleyball leagues. I've interacted with people who are doing this.
It is a ton of work love spent half a decade, building their connections in the community. And whether you agree with their approach or not, they have put in work they have talked to athletes to get a league up and you have one team and to find 10 other owners and to get started and to write contracts and to find athletes.
The undertaking is massive. This seems like a PR stunt to me about grabbing a market and not about volleyball.
Well, let's not pretend that let's not act like you're reinventing the wheel here. You're talking about grassroots to pro. That's what love is doing. You're not creating something new. It just looks like you're trying to piggyback off of what somebody has already done the work for and try to like make it better, in your opinion.
And I'm sorry, but like Carrie Walsh was involved in the PVF. I believe she was an owner of the San Diego Mojo and that fell through. Are you just jumping ship to whatever you can try to attach your name to because this is ridiculous. You were involved in PVF because you believed in PVF and now all of a sudden like the league is not major enough.
This is a joke. I'm sorry it's a joke and if you want some backstory. I tried to do some digging here. PVF as we know started in 2024. But before the league even started, the PVF came into conflict with the supernovas because they tried to acquire the Vegas thrill.
And then that was blocked by the league. And so to get back at the supernovas the PVF co-founders tried to resist this takeover by selling shares of the league to a competing PVF owner in the Grand Rapids rise.
So this has been brewing since before PVF even played its first match. This just seems so petty. And hearing how they tried to acquire another team before the league even started it for sure seems like control and power.
And I saw an Instagram post about this the other day and I tend to agree with it is the number of leagues that are being created while the optics may come across as like building the sport, growing the sport, increasing visibility of the sport.
I think ultimately and I agree with this what this person said it is going to hurt the sport. How many people have tried to run leagues in the United States that have completely failed. And now you have two organizations that are trying to make a go of it.
And it's just this is going to end this is USA volleyball needs to step in at some point because this is actually getting ridiculous. Well I could get behind love and PVF because love is trying to do something in professional sport that hasn't been done before.
They're trying their own method their own model. They have a unique approach. Don't know if it's going to work. Don't know if it will be good. But there was definite thought put into what the vision what the mission was, and they took time to execute it and move forward with their plan.
PVF started as a league that was going to be run like any other major league franchise, which is totally fine. You had two entities trying to do something. And anytime you're trying to build something from scratch in a new market, there are competing ideas there needs to be some competition.
This was great, in my opinion. Maybe we end up amalgamating at one point but you have to see what works in the market. This is, again, in my opinion, not about the athletes, not about the volleyball. And I think the direct competition with the other two leagues will hurt the sport in general.
This just feels so gross to me and I don't know. We'll see what happens. We'll see what happens. But this news came out this week and we just had to share. But I am in complete opposition to this league. Just let the two that are trying develop.
But you're already part of the PVF. Just work together to make the league better. If you've got $100 million, put it into the league and make it better.
Oh, boo hoo. You didn't get to acquire a team. So now you're going to go pout and just like take your toys elsewhere. Like that's what this sounds like. And I'm sorry, but you think that you're the biggest, most successful franchise in the PVF. And yeah, maybe you are. But guess what?
You're in Omaha.
Omaha is a very unique volleyball market. You're telling me that Tennessee is going to do the same thing. I'm sorry. They might like volleyball, but they are not Omaha in their passion for volleyball. You have taken the 1% use case for volleyball fandom in the world.
And you think you're going to replicate that in 10 different states? I'm sorry.
Well, I'm all for volleyball progressing in the US across the world. Maybe this turns out for the positive, but I just don't see. I just don't see this working out well, especially trying to get a whole league off the ground in one year. It's going to be rushed. It's not going to be executed the way that they're envisioning it or putting it forward.
You can't build the relationships in that short amount of time, but we'll keep you updated. And if anybody ever gets back to me, I'll let you know how it goes.
On a calmer note, we had some volleyball happen in this week.
Let's talk about volleyball.
So are actually happening. So in NCAA men's volleyball number five and six, BYU and Ball State had back to back series on Thursday and Friday. BYU won both of those matches in five. And we're going to talk about one of, we're going to talk about the first one of those in a little bit.
Penn State is now 0 and 4. They lost to both UCLA and Stanford in Austin this weekend. So last week, as we said, they lost to Lewis and Loyola Chicago. So their ranking went from 8 to 14 in the AVCA poll. So their losses this week were to higher ranked opponents. So I'm not sure what it's going to do to their ranking, but this is not the start Penn State was looking for.
Well, and we heard that the majority of their team got sick. They're coming off illness. They only traveled 13 people to Austin. So I don't know if that is taken into consideration when the coaches do the polls or the rankings. Probably not. But yeah, not a great start to the season for them.
Well, and it's really bad because you want to like build your RPI and you want your head to heads to be really good because only eight teams to make the tournament. So every match is taken into consideration. So this start, even if they do recover from this is going to be, they're going to have to be flawless moving forward.
They have dug themselves a pretty big hole.
But I will say UCLA is looking real good.
Wow. Of all the men's teams that we've watched so far UCLA is the best. Mind you, we haven't seen. We haven't watched Long Beach State. We haven't watched Irvine.
But man, they look good. Wow. They looked significantly better than BYU and Ball State. They crushed Penn State.
They were fun to watch. They were fun to watch.
Edo David, I'm sorry. That is a man among boys.
I was like worried when he was serving some of those balls that people were going to get injured.
I mean, he hit the libero in the chest down the line.
It was like cardiac arrest.
I thought he was, I didn't think he was getting back up.
It was, yeah, it was impressive.
I will say as we've watched more college men's volleyball, I was a little worried about the miss serves. Sometimes men's volleyball is tough to watch in that regard.
The matches we've watched have been pretty good, but we tuned in to the end of one match between Stanford and Penn State where we tallied up 30 miss serves.
On each side.
On each side. We had a set a piece of miss serves and that's when you got to turn the game off. It's just not worth watching.
30 per team.
That's at some point as the coach, you look at the team and go, boys, we're standing on the baseline and we're floating the ball over and we'll see what happens from there.
Like seriously, just short serve the middle at that point. Like let's just try our best here.
Wild.
If we look at love this week, the head to head match was Atlanta beating Austin in four. What were your thoughts of that match?
I mean, in the preseason when I was looking at the teams, I thought that Austin would be among the top teams and I thought Atlanta would be the worst.
But Austin has lost two out of their three matches. I understand the season is long. They could get better.
I was surprised Tessa Grubbs showed up big time for Atlanta. I don't think anybody expected that because Coutinho is the quote unquote starting right side for that team.
But Grubbs had what like 17 kills or something crazy. That was interesting. And I just like Austin, we talked about it last week.
They're just really back and forth in the setting department. I just they're not settling in to any one thing.
So I think that's causing issues.
I also feel like they have maybe a bit of an identity issue where they have so many players from Texas who have all played together.
They have a nucleus of five players that can be on the court. And then you've added some of these veterans, some of these foreigners.
They haven't played with a super consistent lineup. They've been subbing in and out to kind of find some rhythm, whether that's a setting issue or a personnel issue.
They definitely have the pieces to be very good. We'll see if it can come together. And if you can find some of that team cohesion with so many players being incredibly familiar with each other already.
That's my take on the situation from the outside.
Incredibly familiar with each other. But if you look at the grand scheme of things, not incredibly experienced in professional volleyball.
Totally.
So that's like the interesting back and forth here is like you do have players there who are incredibly experienced, who have experienced success at the pro level that aren't former Texas athletes.
And then the Texas at least in general are pretty young and don't have that foundation. Plus with a foreign coach, it's it's tricky.
That that to me, that doesn't strike me as a volleyball issue that strikes me as a dynamic issue. And we'll see if they can find some rhythm.
And like you said, if they find a consistent setting rhythm with the team, I think you'll see them pick up.
We also had Madison beat Salt Lake in five this weekend and Houston crushed Salt Lake in four. Salt Lake won a set, but they shouldn't have.
They absolutely shouldn't have because Houston demolished them in all of the other three. I think Houston just kind of like took a breather.
Well, Salt Lake made a substitution adjustment on the right side and the left side. It looked like Houston took a second to adjust to both of those players, but then rolled in the fourth again.
The other the sets that Houston won weren't even close. It wasn't it wasn't a game.
Well, we're going to talk about Madison and Salt Lake in our feature match section. But like Ronnie Jones Perry was incredible for Salt Lake in that game and then just didn't play against Houston.
And I'm like, are you injured? Are you tired? I understand it was a two and a half hour banger the night before, but that's part of being a professional athlete is like you have to make it happen.
So she didn't play. I was very confused and taking a page of the NBA load management playbook. But Houston looked very good. Very good.
Omaha Madison are playing as we record this. So that's why we're not talking about it in the PVF after their opening loss to Omaha Atlantis back on track, having beaten both Vegas and Columbus.
Expansion team Indy Ignite is off to a great start, which is good to see. You always want the expansion teams doing well.
And we had Omaha drop their first match of the season in five to Vegas. So they are still the team to beat and the team on an exit.
It's early in the season. And because there are so many different teams and they're all like back and forth, there are so many teams that are two and one right now.
So we kind of need the next few weeks to shake out to see who's going to differentiate themselves, because right now there's just like a solid chunk that are like all the same.
We need three more weeks. I feel in three weeks we'll have some clarity on where teams are, what they do.
Maybe we can do a midseason or a five week recap of where teams are and what we think.
Our first feature match of the week is BYU versus Ball State. This is like the first match they played. So this happened on Thursday. What are your thoughts?
BYU had the reverse sweep in this match, but I thought that they were the better team all the way through.
Like those first two sets were really close, probably could have gone either way.
One of the biggest things I noticed was the Ball State setter. He takes the ball really high and his hands don't move at all, which is great if you can deliver good location because you don't have any reads or any tells.
I found out later that he was Brazilian, which makes sense because Bruno, who probably every setter looks up to, sets the same way.
Now the problem was I thought he had consistency issues. I thought his set location varied and when he set well, the team did a very good job.
And when the location wasn't great, it was really tough. I thought they lived and died on how he set.
I can agree with that. I feel like he under set the right side a lot. It was inside.
And I think that combined with the right side's approach angle was just a recipe for disaster because a right handed right side, he was a lean was kicking out so far outside the sideline.
And as a righty coming in on that angle, A, it's very difficult to turn it back down the line from that position on a good set.
But add to that the fact that the sets were pretty consistently inside and it he had one option the whole night.
He did find a few tips down the line which were successful, but you don't want that to be your best shot.
So I thought that combination struggled and that's tough because he got the most sets.
He had 37 attempts and only hit 081 on the match. Your hitter getting the most sets can't have that kind of night.
And I didn't always love his decision making, but I didn't think he was put in a good position to score.
I mean, watching the match, I kept being like this right side hits one angle, one angle only.
And BYU was not making that adjustment. They finally did and were getting a lot of blocks on him after that.
But it took them a while to kind of get there.
Yeah. And on the flip side, BYU lost the first two sets, made a setter sub in the third set and then rode him all the way to the final.
Now, while the first BYU setter didn't make the same kind of errors, I thought he ran a better offense in general in terms of ball distribution.
His set out to the left side was really high and they had a smaller left side.
Keani Thimm, who this guy flies. He is an incredible jumper. He's got a quick arm. I liked him as a player.
However, with the speed they ran the ball to the outside, he always had two blocks on him. And when he was in the front row, he struggled to score.
I think he was perfect out of the back row. I loved the way they ran him out of the back row.
They made the setter switch in the third set. They sped the set up to him on the left side and he was much more efficient from there.
So I thought that was a good adjustment by BYU.
Well, and when I believe Tyler Herget was the setter sub that came in and Noah Hain started.
But when Tyler Herget came in, the other thing that contributed to Keani Thimm's success was he was running the middle.
True.
He was running the middle so much more than Hain did. And when you have a six foot outside in men's volleyball, I'm sorry, but a double, a massive double block in front of their face all night is not going to go well.
So I think it was the combination of setting the middle to hold the block a little longer and speeding up that set that helped him because when Hain was in, I thought that he out set Machado for Ball State.
Agreed.
But that set was so high and so slow.
I mean, he was hitting against a double block all night and they were coming back uncoverable.
Very fast. Thimm is very good from the back row, as you said, and I think because of his size, it just gives him more angles to avoid the block.
Like when you have such a height mismatch like that, I don't care how high you jump. When the mismatch is that big and you are being four hands are in your face, your angles are cut down significantly.
It's just physics. But that back row ball, he was outstanding because the space just opened up in front of him so much more.
And he was able to hit that ball left, right thumb down, thumb up, but he moved it around and hit short hit deep out of the back row. I'd run them all day out of the back row. I thought he was fantastic.
I do think that that was the turning point, though, that setter sub. Bold, very bold because honestly in sets one and two, BYU had big leads and they gave them up late in the set.
Like in set one, BYU was up 1612 and managed to lose and it was the same story in set two. So I thought that that was a bold choice to make that switch, but it paid off. The herget did really well.
I thought that ball state won the serve and block battle overall, especially in the first two sets. I thought they put BYU under pressure. I thought that their block looked really good. And I think if Machado is able to find a better rhythm with his setting style as the season goes on, I think it's going to hold them in good stead.
Like I think it's a good technique if you can deliver. And again, we're early in the season, but that to me was a positive watching ball state was their ability to generate pressure from the service line.
Yeah, I think they definitely out served BYU. BYU is making a ton of mistakes errors, which we do typically see in men's volleyball. Like it's not surprising, but I was more surprised at how few errors ball state was making in comparison.
I was impressed with Machado's blocking ability as a setter. He's a big boy, but like he was he got five blocks. I think the middle Savitsky Lind blocked very well. I mean, it was fun to watch. Honestly, the libero battle, the BYU libero wasn't even there for me.
Didn't notice them, but the ball state libero, especially again in the first two sets, he made some place down the stretch after 20 to extend some rallies that were incredible.
That was a big difference maker, especially because they were coming from behind the big thing and a big difference between NCAA men's and women's volleyball is in women's volleyball, you tend to see them in uncomfortable situations.
You see them just like continue the ball or like allow the play to continue, but the boys or the men. Sometimes they make the most reckless decisions. It's like they're trying to be so sneaky.
Like let me hit this back row ball on to and surprise everyone or let me run to the baseline and Jack this set. There are so many things that happen and I'm like they are being reckless and this is very impulsive. It's not well thought through.
I mean, let's be honest. If you look at most boys age 18 to 22, I don't think that anyone would say decision making was a strong suit at that point in your life and you know that shows on the volleyball court and these guys are all physical.
They're big. They're jumping well. The thought process is I can do that. I can make this work. So we'll see. And again, it's early guys are trying to earn their spot.
They're trying to see, you know, where you fit and how things work. So I think that stuff will get cleaned up. But yeah, there were definitely a few head scratching swings where you thought that that maybe wasn't the best decision.
Another noticeable difference in this match for me was we saw the attempts attack attempts for both teams were pretty similar. BYU swung on 138 balls in the match. Ball State swung on 137. So almost identical. BYU had 63 kills on the match to Ball State's 47.
Again, we had two really close sets in the first two, but then there were a lot of errors on Ball State side in sets three and four. It was a little bit closer, but not really in the fifth set. So we'll see.
They have potential there, but BYU is definitely more consistent. I also thought that Luke Benson for BYU played a really good game. He had 37 attempts, hit 216.
Like overall, the outsides for BYU were a little bit better than Ball State's. And I think if they can, if Ball State can iron out the right side situation, then they can get Alin involved in scoring points.
He's physical enough to do it if he's got some options. So I'm curious to see how that connection develops as the season goes on.
Well, and even I'm going to butcher his name, Ndava Zochava.
Well, that's better than I would have done.
Wow. I gave myself a pat on the back for that.
I thought that he made some incredible plays and then he would make just crazy errors, like several in a row. And then he would be brilliant and then disappear.
So I think if he can get a little more consistent too, I think that would be really beneficial for Ball State.
But Ball State were just throwing in so many subs. They were trying to find solutions, whereas BYU stayed pretty consistent, except for that double sub in set three that they carried the distance.
I was shocked that they even, they barely set their starting right side, but then they set Ian Little so much more.
So I'm like, you need to get your right side going here. Like I think in the first two sets, BYU was so dependent on Keanu Thim and the setter was setting him so much and it was not going well.
Especially at the end of sets.
So like, let's spread the offense. I know I talk about running the middle, but like run your right side even.
Like he was just setting the same guy over and over and the sets were close. Like the sets that BYU lost were really close. 25-23, 27-25.
But then the ones that they won, they won by a huge margin at 15 and 19. So there's something to be said for a balanced offense.
It doesn't have to be like a hundred percent balanced, but like let's watch the distribution here.
So watching the broadcast, one of the players they talked about from Ball State was Patrick Rogers, who was on the under 21 youth national team.
What were your thoughts of him on the match? I'm curious.
I was underwhelmed. I expected a lot more.
And I don't know if that's fair hype, like paying attention to the broadcast. They're obviously going to highlight the player who was on the national team.
But given what we saw, given the interview, what he said, I was expecting somebody who was a little more dynamic. I didn't think I think he made poor decisions.
So that's one thing when you've played internationally and you've played on the national team for me, that's an indicator that you've kind of moved your game into a more consistent level that you're able to perform.
The coaches are obviously watching on the national team. You need to be able to do that.
And I just didn't see that decision making from him in the match at the level I would expect for somebody who played on the national team.
Yeah, offensively, I was not impressed. He didn't really do much. Again, I can't base this his general style of play off of one match.
I'm going to have to watch them play again for sure. But also his serve. He was consistently tossing that ball way too far into the court.
Like he was killing himself with that toss. And I'm like, my man, step back a little bit or like shorten that toss because it was consistent and he was really struggling.
If he picks up and the setter finds the connection, I think Ball State is going to be is going to give teams a lot of trouble.
But in my opinion, those are two pretty big gifts. Overall, I really enjoyed watching the match. I thought it was entertaining. It was pretty even from a physical standpoint.
You know, we want we said we watched UCLA play. They were just better than the team they played this match with better play from a couple players could have swung the way it went.
And the second one again was relatively close. These were very evenly matched teams and the games were very exciting.
Our second feature match of the week is Love Madison versus Salt Lake City. This is another exciting one, another five setter. But what were your takeaways?
My takeaway was any match that we watched goes five sets. It's insane. Like every single one.
What were my thoughts? Kojima de Libero. I thought she was fantastic.
I was excited to watch Franklin play and we can get into this in more detail, but I was impressed with how she performed in this match and she she held her own and then some.
It was really good to see. I think her stats overall. She had 20 points. She led the Madison team. She got set 45 times, 19 kills. She hit 311.
We had talked about her and how her game was going to translate to the professional level. I'm still not 100% sold when she faces a bigger middle block who can take away a little bit more of that cross-court swing she loves.
But given where she is right now and what was in front of her, she was excellent. And she passed way better than I expected her to.
She did, but this was going to be, I don't think Salt Lake City served tough at all. I thought that all of.
She still passed great though.
No, and you know what? And again, this is all you can do. If you're a player, you can deal with the situation that you're in and you can perform with where you at.
And she did that 100%. But Salt Lake City served the middle third of the court distance wise, almost exclusively. There were only one or two players who really drove the passers back and that did put Madison in trouble.
But for the most part, I don't think Salt Lake City applied any service pressure.
No, when people got Franklin, they caught her high on service. The passes were not good, but I agree with you. The serving from Salt Lake City was pretty neutral and just right in their window of comfort.
Overall, I thought that Madison very much relied on their outsides. I thought that Claire Chasse also played better. I've never seen her play. I didn't know anything about her.
She also did better than I expected.
Yeah, she was great. She had 18 points. So her and Franklin led the team. 18 points, 39 attempts, had 18 kills, hit 308.
When your outsides are hitting over 300 and they're getting the majority of the sets, you're going to be in good shape.
I thought those two held the team together and played really well.
I thought the middle battle was pretty evenly matched. I didn't think either team really ran their middle a ton, but from a blocking perspective, going head to head, I think it was pretty evenly matched.
I think Kojima held that team together for Salt Lake City, their libero. She was outstanding.
The thing that kind of frustrates me about Love when they're doing their scouting report is they'll go and they'll pick two players that do not remotely do the same things and be like, let's compare these two players.
It was mind boggling to me.
And I'm like, can we not? Can we compare apples to apples, please? Because then as a viewer, you'll get a better understanding of who's actually doing better.
But for this match, they decided to compare Kojima, the libero for Salt Lake City with Annie Schumacher, formerly Drews from Madison.
And the reasoning that I figure for this is Annie Drews or Annie Schumacher loves to bang angle.
So they figured Madison is going to block the angle, leaving the line available for Kojima to dig.
So who's going to score more points? Is Annie Schumacher going to score down the line or is Kojima going to dig her?
Kojima won that battle.
Kojima won that battle. Kojima crushed that battle. And it's not actually a fair stat comparison because Kojima is digging everybody.
But I think Annie Schumacher ended the match with what, 11 kills or something?
She had 14 points on 47 attempts, 12 kills, but hit 064. She was not very good.
No, she wasn't. And Kojima had 20 something digs.
She was unbelievable. She passed well. She set well. She might be in the running for the libero of the league based on what I've seen so far.
100%. This woman is outstanding. But Madison was leaving Schumacher a truckload of line and she was bound and determined to annihilate this ball down the line.
And Kojima was just scooping her left and right. And then Schumacher tried to go angle, got blocked.
So I didn't think that she was all that effective. She wasn't digging anything or blocking.
So I expected more from her. But as you were saying, the young left sides for Madison definitely stepped up and kind of made up for that difference, I thought.
I would agree with you. And since we're talking about players head to head, I wanted to ask you who you thought won the setter battle.
Very interesting question. And I think we're dealing with two very different setters.
I personally would say that Jordan Poulter won the setting battle. I think she was delivering better sets.
But Lauren Carlini was on her own level defensively and just her engagement in the team coverage. She was outstanding.
So I think from a defensive standpoint, Carlini won that battle. But I think from an offensive standpoint, I think Poulter was delivering better sets.
And who do you think? I mean, Jones Perry had a great match for Salt Lake City. She was probably the only player who could really score points for Salt Lake City.
Who do you think was better? You think she was better or do you think Franklin was better if you had to put them head to head?
Watching the match, I kept making comments about how well Jones Perry was playing. So I would say her. What did the stats say? Am I wrong?
No, you're not wrong. It was very close. Franklin was more efficient. They both had 19 kills. Jones Perry had 55 attempts. So she only hit 255.
But she was also a little bit more of the garbage cleanup for Salt Lake City. And was used out of the back row way more than Franklin was.
Perfect. Whereas I think that Annie Schumacher got a lot of the out of system balls for Madison and Franklin. Not that she didn't have double blocks in front of her, but she was run a little more in system.
So it was pretty comparable. Well, I mean, the game plan. I would say the game plan when you're scouting Madison would be to focus on Schumacher first, given her history, her pedigree, her success at the national team levels.
And that was the focus. You could tell early on. They started heavy at Schumacher. The block defense for Salt Lake was great. And so then Franklin kind of had to step into that role a little bit more.
But Jones Perry, you know, I think it was a huge improvement from last week when they played Atlanta. She was much her serve was working a lot better. I know she still missed a lot, but it was much better than last week.
So I think that player for them, in my opinion, she's got the green light to get after that because they don't apply a ton of service pressure as a team in general.
And as you said, she was the only person scoring for them. Haiti Casanova was nowhere. Didn't exist on the court. Nowhere. After an outstanding start last week, again, scouting report, they focused on her. It worked.
But Skylar Fields came in and did a pretty good job. But I think Salt Lake's Achilles heel right now is trying to figure out what the heck to do with that outside hitter position, the second one.
Well, and the other thing too is that when Haley Washington comes back, that's going to help. I thought that Madison needed to exploit the Dixon matchup in the middle a little bit more.
Dixon, she knows what she's doing. She is in the right places, but that was a mismatch. I thought defensively Madison could have attacked her a little bit more and run the middle against her. I would have done that personally.
We didn't see that, but I thought that was a miss for them. But I do think that that second left side spot, they need to find an answer to that.
It's filtering through players, trying to get somebody to be consistent. And it's just like a revolving door every match we watch from them.
We obviously don't have a huge body of work to analyze these teams and to figure out where people are going to sit. My question for you is watching Madison, do you think that the left sides in Franklin and Chasse played better than they will on average?
Do you think they had really good matches? And do you think Annie is going to be better than she was in that match? When you watch that team, where is that equilibrium for you?
Teams are going to, the more film that these coaches get on Franklin and Chasse, the tougher their lives are going to become.
Obviously, people are familiar with Annie Schumacher, so the game plans are kind of focused on her. But I think it's going to become a little more balanced. And I think that equilibrium will start to be found in set distribution and the kind of the ups and downs.
I think, you know, they can use Franklin and Chasse more early, which will ease the load on Schumacher. So I think it's going to be a give and take all season. But having three people on the court on the outsides that are capable of scoring is a huge asset.
Agreed. For me, if I'm watching that team, my biggest focus is getting Carlini to connect with the middles. Because with those three outsides, I think that's a solid core. If you can run the middle and get teams to have to stay, you know, a half second longer, I think life on the outsides becomes even easier for them.
And I think like run the pipe a little more like you're running Schumacher a bit on the back in the back row, but I don't think not enough. I think having multiple back row options will help open things up as well.
Do you think Chasse is physical enough to hit a good point? I think Franklin can.
No, I was thinking more from Franklin. I mean, overall, that was a really fun match to watch. The every time I thought I knew what was going to happen, something else surprised me. I thought Sully had it in the bag, to be honest.
But you know, Madison, that crowd was behind them. Madison Wisconsin showed up for love. It was really cool to see. So yeah, it was fun. Again, player of the game for me, even though her team didn't win was Kojima. Her defensive game was outstanding. Her setting. Yes, please give me a little barrel that can set like that any day. All around really fun to watch and I can't wait to see how this develops in the coming weeks.
All right. It's on the game time. I thought today we would do a pick a player similar to the NCAA. I think that there's lots of interesting players in the love league. I think that this would be a good chance to kind of talk through what you know about some of these players you played against them some of them internationally.
Give the listeners your insights into who you think would would be on the best team. And we'll go from here. So I'm going to give you a list of players sometimes three or four when you have to pick one for a position and then a list of six or seven for the left sides and middles and you can pick two. How's that sound?
I'm nervous. Okay, here we go. All right. So I think love in general is stacked at the center position. I think you see a lot of high caliber setters with really good resume. So we're going to start there with a bang. So I'll give you four and you tell me who you would choose to build your team around from Austin with Carly Lloyd from Houston. We have Micah Hancock from Madison Lauren Carlini and from Salt Lake Jordan Poulter right off the bat. I'm going to take Carly.
Right off the bat. I'm going to take Carly Lloyd off that list. Nothing against her. I just think the other three at this point in time are better. And the three that remain it's really interesting because they all bring different strengths to the game.
Illuminators.
I would say, you know, Micah Hancock her serving is unreal. Lauren Carlini, we spoke about it earlier, her defensive abilities, unbelievable. And Jordan Poulter is tall, so she can fix a lot. She puts up a good block and her delivery is probably the cleanest and she runs the fastest offense, I would say.
I will, I'm going to have to go with Poulter just from a pure setting perspective. The other two definitely bring things to the table that I think are incredibly valuable, but I would go with Poulter from a strictly setting perspective.
All right, I think I know who you're going to pick from this one based on your analysis of the last match, but if we look at the libero position from Salt Lake City, would you take Kojima from Omaha, Juan Orantes or from Atlanta, Penoy?
Okay, to be completely fair, I haven't watched Omaha play at all. I have a lot of respect for Justine Wong Orantes, but I'm going to go with Kojima because her court coverage has been incredible defensively. She's covering a ton of court on serve receive, her set.
Like, I don't have anything bad to say about her. Shocker. So maybe that will change as I'm able to see more matches and see everybody play a little more in depth, but as of right now I'm going to go with Kojima.
Taking yourself off the list. If we look at the opposites.
Oh, maybe am I in the league?
Who would you choose? Would you go from Houston, Jordan Thompson, from Austin, newly minted opposite Madison Skinner, or from Madison, Annie Schumacher?
Killing me. This one is getting me.
Just for the listeners to know I've been sitting in silence for five minutes so far.
Okay, I'm just going to say I've narrowed it down to Madison Skinner and Jordan Thompson.
Would your answer change if I asked you, like pick one who you think is going to be best this year and then pick one who you'd want on your team for the next three years?
No, we're not doing that. We can't make qualifiers.
Okay, I have to stick. I'll stick with Jordan Thompson because she has proven herself. I will say, from what I've seen in the love matches, like defensively her and Skinner are pretty similar.
Obviously, I think I personally think Skinner is playing with a weaker setter, which could influence some things. She's doing great.
But and Jordan Thompson does struggle to hit on the left side. We didn't see it this weekend, but it's a thing.
No, I have to stick with Jordan Thompson and I can't really give much explanation past that.
Okay, now pick two for the outside hitters. So from Atlanta, you have Kelsey Cook from Austin, Anna Hawk from Houston, Jess Merzik from Madison, Claire Chasse from Madison, Sarah Franklin and then from Salt Lake City, Ronnie Jones Perry.
Pick two?
Pick two. Who would your left sides be? And I want you to pick them as a group. Like these are the two players who are on the court. Put your GM hat on.
Okay, well, to be completely honest, I think Kelsey Cook is a little past her prime offensively. I don't think that she is the highest level left side anymore. Like she's more of, in my opinion, a ball control player now.
So the players I'm debating between right now are Kelsey Cook, Jess Merzik, Sarah Franklin and Ronnie Jones Perry. Oh my gosh, you're killing me.
I have to give Merzik props though. She has been absolutely crushing it and she has been putting up numbers. So Merzik is one of my picks for sure.
So she's the P1 because her passing isn't as solid, which kind of takes Franklin out of the mix because I feel like they're a similar type of player. Can you remind me, is Jones Perry passing that great? I can't remember.
She was, she was not bad. She's playing with Kojima and Kojima passes two thirds of the court. So I don't think we've seen teams really be able to isolate her.
Well, I mean, if you have a P1 in Merzik, then a ball control player, I'll just go with Kelsey Cook. Her passing and defense are really good.
Do I necessarily want her to take a huge load offensively? No. But I think in a system that has other players that can fill in the gaps, I think she's a really good P2.
Okay. Yeah, these are hard. Well, you only have one position left and I'm going to read you the middles and I'm going to apologize ahead of time because I am going to butcher a few names here. But here are six, pick two.
I can read your list. I already know who I'm picking.
Okay, well, I'm going to read the list so that the listeners know and we'll go from there. So from Atlanta, we have Anya Afogbu. From Austin, we have Chiaka Okbogu. From Houston, we have Amber Ijeed. From Madison, we have Taylor Sambothi.
From Omaha, Lauren Stivrans and from Salt Lake City. We haven't seen her play yet, but she's on the roster. Haley Washington.
You can assume she's healthy. Out of respect, Haley Washington is getting picked for sure and my second is Chiaka Okbogu. There's no, the other ones are just not at that level. I'm sorry. Fair enough. That was the easiest one I think.
Well, there's your team. They're the players. If Sarah was a GM in love, this is what her Toronto team would look like. Love Toronto. Those would be the players. I hope you guys like that. I'd love to hear in the comments who you guys would choose and what you guys think of Sarah's selections.
Thank you so much. It's fun to throw the other boss every once in a while. But if you guys have any other ideas or games that we'd like to play, I'm always open for suggestions. I don't tell Sarah what we're doing ahead of time. So it's a lot of fun.
All right, we had some great listener questions this week and a couple from the week before. So I want to put those out there and we'll give them an answer and we'll see where we end up.
A lot of people are asking what is compensation like for pro volleyball players in the overseas leagues? What influences it, whether it's up or down and where is the top money currently?
Woo. Okay, so the top money for women is in Italy and Turkey. Japan and China can pay well as well. I would say for men, Italy and Russia are probably the top paying leagues. The top athletes in volleyball are making over a million dollars a year.
Currently the top paid female athlete is Tiana Boscovich. She's Serbian. She's making 1.5 million euros in playing for his Aziz Bashi in Turkey.
And I mean Wilfredo Leon is the highest paid male currently. He signed a three year contract with Perugia in Italy for four and a half million. So he's making the same as Tiana. But you're seeing A1 Italy and Turkey, the salaries are going up year after year.
And some leagues, the smaller leagues like Germany and France, they're starting to struggle and their salaries are going down. My guess is because the American league, there's more competition in that price range, I would say.
So it's making it tough to make it work. But for example, Paola Eganu is making 800,000 euros. Gabi is making 750,000. They're both playing in Italy.
So the top top players in the world are circling a million or making more. And then you've got like other top players making half a million euros around there. That is not the norm. That is what top athletes are getting paid in Western European leagues like France or Germany or Scandinavia or Spain.
You could see salaries as low as less than 30,000 a year and then tickling six figures. It really depends on how good you are and how much money your team has. The things that kind of influence it up or down are sponsorships.
Corporate sponsors are huge in Europe. You often see because it's like they use it as a massive tax write off. So teams are constantly collecting sponsors. You see the jerseys covered in sponsorship logos and that's basically influencing how what the team's budget is any given year and you see it really influenced by the economy in any given country.
If for any given year. If a country is doing really well economically, the budgets go way up. If the economy in a country is struggling, the budgets go way down. For example, I played in Brazil for a couple years and at that time the budgets were huge.
But they switched leadership soon after I left there and the budgets completely like switch leadership of the country and the budgets completely plummeted and that's when you started to see Brazilian players actually leave Brazil, which wasn't common.
So there's a lot of factors that go into it. Another thing to think about is there's also bonuses for personal performance for your team's performance how they do in the season and there's individual sponsorships so it adds up.
If you're on a good team, going to Champions League going to League Finals winning winning the League Cup. Like there's a lot of different ways to earn bonuses so the compensation for the top leagues in the world is not even close to what we're seeing in the US.
So as we talk about as we listen to love talk about bringing in the best players and doing all this you see that we've got some high level middles you see that we have some high level liberos in the love league and those are two positions that generally don't make as much money as the other positions,
so you can pay those players to come over and be in these leagues and get top tier athletes in those positions but I think it's going to be a little bit of time before you start to see the really high end opposites and left sides who are in the meat of their career with
the same potential playing in the US. Yeah, point scores, make the money in professional volleyball so the opposites and the left sides point scoring left sides, make the most money.
You do see setters make a lot of money and I think the reason that we see high level setters in love for example is because they have a vested interest that is different than money, and all the setters are American.
So I don't think we can add setters to the equation for love because there's some other things that play there. But, yeah, liberos and middles are the lowest paid athletes in volleyball and so it's easier for them to explore more leagues.
Another question we got was, what are your thoughts on coaches coaching a sport they have never played. My initial reaction is I have no problems with it.
I actually one of the first coaches I ever worked with as an assistant was football rugby player and but he had been coaching volleyball for 20 years he was a biomechanics grad, and he could teach fundamentals of volleyball better than anybody else I've ever seen
it was incredible his ability to connect with his athletes and teach the fundamental skills that was his skill set. Now, he didn't understand volleyball at the high competitive levels, so he brought in his assistant coaches who filled that skill set.
And so, no coach is great at everything. I have been around some of the best coaches in the world, and everybody has something they're really good at and they have areas of weakness and I don't care if you haven't played if you can use your strengths and assemble your
assistant coaches to fill in those gaps. I have no problem with it. I think it only becomes a disconnect. When you do get to the higher levels and just the understanding of what is possible or not or what a player is seeing in a certain situation
like that experience, having played the sport is very important so I do think that anybody can coach it surrounding yourself, like you said with with experienced people is important as it is in any business or walk of life.
But there are certain things that a coach may miss if they didn't actually play the sport themselves. I think that's fair. And it does same thing goes, you have coaches who played the game 20 years ago.
That experience is no longer relevant, the game is different. So, while you can adjust, I think playing a sport at a high level really helps you connect with athletes from a mentality standpoint from what you're seeing you you understand the skill acquisition
because you went through it, but I would agree with that in general. Our last question of the week is why aren't there more jump serves in women's volleyball.
I believe that this was coming from a viewer who spent most time watching NCAA volleyball, because I think that that affects the answer in my opinion.
So, I'll go first and then you can, you can give your opinion but I think specifically in the NCAA game because you have so many subs and you see the defensive specialists come in a lot in the back row as the serving subs those players are generally smaller better on defense
so you're looking at extending rallies, they don't have those crushing spin serves. When you have limited subs and your opposites are going six rotations and your P ones are going six rotations.
Those players generally have spin serves and you see them more because they're on the floor. I think that is one of the biggest disconnects in the NCAA game versus the international game.
I would say that it's also in the women's game it's easier to pass a spin serve. Women aren't hitting the ball at a blistering speed like you see in the men's game, like the men's jump serves and the women's jump serves are completely different and that is nothing against women, it's just the men are beating the crap out of the ball.
So, unless a woman is able to put an incredible amount of pace on her serve which there are women that can Boscovich, Agonu, Melissa Vargas, Kara Kurt to name a couple, unless you are hitting the ball that hard the trajectory of a spin serve is so much more true and easy to control
than a float serve, especially in the women's game where the net is lower and the women can create an intense trajectory on their float serves. It just moves more making it much more difficult to pass than the traditional ball that's just spinning.
Again, there are exceptions to that rule and there are women that can create incredible movement on their spin serve, Micah Hancock is one of them. In my experience, it is much more difficult generally to pass a float serve in the women's game, a jump float serve than a spin serve.
And I think the passing numbers support that if you look at spin serves versus float serves across the women's game.
Thank you so much to everybody that submitted questions we love that we record them so even if we don't get to them in a particular episode we have them all written down so we will get to them.
So please keep them coming because we love this segment of the show.
All right, let's look forward to next week. We still, we're going to have some great volleyball on so I'm going to highlight a few things on Wednesday, we have number five BYU taking on number three UC Irvine at nine o'clock p.m. Eastern.
That's the men's NCAA side. They also have a rematch on Friday so we're going to get to watch it back to back there. We also have a love head to head match between Houston and Salt Lake City at nine p.m. Eastern as well on Wednesday, nine p.m. Eastern, put that double screen
up watch both.
You know that's what we'll be doing.
This weekend with love is happening in Omaha so you know the crowds are going to be out you know the atmosphere is going to be awesome. And we'll finally get to see Omaha play a few matches I think they've only played one so far.
Yeah, we really need to watch them play.
On Friday at 10 p.m. Eastern we have San Diego mojo hosting in the ignite for PDF on Sunday at eight p.m. Eastern. We have number two Long Beach State taking on number 10 Pepperdine again that's an NCAA men's.
I think that's going to be must watch. And then in PVF action at 6pm Eastern, the Orlando Valkyries are hosting the Vegas thrill.
Again, so much volleyball. These are our personal picks of what to watch. But I mean you don't have to but this is what we're going to be watching.
That concludes this week's episode of volley talk there's always something shaking in the volleyball world and we hope you enjoyed this little fix. Be sure to follow the show so you don't miss any updates and we'd be so grateful if you leave us a five star review.
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