Huskies, Bruins & Trojans atop conference & national stats

After last weekend’s scramble—in both the Pac-12 and nationally—the Washington Huskies have a chance to gain ground on the conference leaders.

UCLA and USC each have two losses; Washington, Cal and Stanford each have four. If the Huskies can manage a sweep, they’ll inch ever closer to the top of the nation’s toughest conference.

All five schools are nationally ranked in the top 10: #1 UCLA, #3 Stanford, #4 USC, #7 Cal & #10 Washington. Naturally, those schools also dominate the conference team and individual stats.

Washington leads in three team categories: Opponent Hitting Percentage, Blocks and Service Aces. USC is tops in Hitting Percentage and Kills. Overall, the top four in every team category includes the Huskies, Bruins and/or Trojans:

Nationally (318 Division 1 teams), Washington is first in blocks/set and 17^th in aces/set. USC is 5^th and UCLA 13^th in assists/set. The Trojans are 4^th and the Bruins are 17^th in kills/set. USC is 7^th in hitting percentage. For some reason, the NCAA doesn’t report opponent hitting percentage, but Washington is undoubtedly in the top ten, if not the national leader. It certainly leads all other ranked teams:

Individually, USC has players with the top Pac-12 stats in four categories: hitting percentage, assists/set, aces/set and digs/set. Washington’s Bianca Rowland leads the conference in blocks/set, and the Huskies have nine players ranked in the top ten in all categories (UCLA and USC have six each.)

Nationally, Rowland is second in the nation in blocks/set; Lauren Barfield is 9^th (Florida State’s Ashley Neff ranks first). USC’s Kendall Bateman ranks 4^th in assists/set; Lauren Williams is 16^th in hitting percentage and Alex Jupiter is 17^th in aces/set and 20^th in kills/set. UCLA’s Rachel Kidder is 11^th in kills/set.