College | Volleyball video replay challenges on the horizon?

NCAA volleyball rules committee recommends experiment by Big 12 schools; What do you think about the idea?

NCAA | Vansant, Nelson, Sybeldon, Mussie and scenes from volleyball's Final Four

Notes from Oklahoma City 

NCAA | The volleyball All-American Cassie Strickland oversight

Regional snub precluded national consideration

• NCAA semifinal | BYU vs. Texas | Oklahoma City | 4PM (Pacific) | ESPN2
• NCAA semifinal | Stanford vs. Penn State | Oklahoma City | 7PM (Pacific) ESPN2

NCAA | Coaches with Washington connections move up the coaching ladder

Former UW standout Stevie Mussie now a Penn State assistant; father of current UW player Bailey Tanner heads up Pepperdine

NCAA | Penn State defeats Wisconsin 3-1 for fifth volleyball championship in seven years

Left/right weapons prove decisive for Nittany Lions; Badger plays with separated shoulder

• #2 Penn State def. #14 Wisconsin 3-1 (25-19, 26-24, 20-25, 25-23)

During the NCAA D1 Women's Volleyball Championships, Volleyblog Seattle on assignment for ncaa.com. Please follow our coverage at http://www.ncaa.com/sports/volleyball-women/d1

SEATTLE -- It was a championship bout with a left and right attack. And after the final round of an

exceptionally high-energy match, Penn State emerged with a 3-1 (25-19, 26-24, 20-25, 25-23) victory against Big Ten rival Wisconsin. It was Penn State’s fifth volleyball championship in the past seven seasons, and sixth overall, tying Stanford for the highest total in NCAA women’s Division I volleyball history.

Penn State's Micha Hancock
-Volleyblog Seattle photo by Leslie Hamann

The attack from the left came from Penn State setter Micha Hancock, voted the most outstanding player of the championships. Hancock’s blistering serve—delivered with her left arm—offered the razor-thin difference throughout the match and—in particular—the deciding fourth set.

“She’s one of the elites,” Wisconsin coach Kelly Sheffield said. “We had no offense at all when she was serving.”

“She’s the best-ever in the nation,” Wisconsin libero Annemarie Hickey said.

Penn State’s right side attack ran primarily through Ariel Scott, who pounded a match-high 21 kills on 51 attempts. The 6-4 All-American was matched up against Wisconsin’s 5-7 dynamo, Deme Morales, nine-inch advantage.

“We planned to go over Morales, because she’s shorter,” Hancock said. “[Morales] is a great player, but we’ve got the hammer over there.”

Wisconsin's Lauren Carlini
-Volleyblog Seattle photo by Leslie Hamann

Throughout the match, Wisconsin countered with a right-side attack of its own. Setter Lauren Carlini sent her middles in motion, connecting almost at will on slides to Dominque Thompson, who finished with a team-high 16 kills on 35 swings. “She’s probably one of the most underrated middles in country,” Carlini said. “People look at her height and think, ‘oh, she can’t be good.’”

Oh, yes, Thompson’s height. Just like her teammate Morales, 5-11 Thompson gave away several inches to her opponent, Penn State’s 6-6 Katie Slay. Yet Wisconsin scored a disproportionate percentage of its points off serve with Morales and Thompson on the front row. Their grit was part of the reason why the Badgers got all the way to set point in the second frame, and reached 23-23 in the fourth. The rest of the story? Lights-out defense.

“That’s what we do,” Sheffield said. “We defend like crazy. It doesn’t always look pretty, but we’ll throw our bodies around with the best of them.”

Throwing bodies around was more than a metaphor; late in the match, Wisconsin libero AnneMarie Hickey landed wrong, popping her shoulder out of its socket. She refused to leave the game.

Wisconsin's AnneMarie Hickey separates her shoulder while diving for a dig
-Volleyblog Seattle photo by Brett Hamann

“It hurt pretty bad,” Hickey admitted. “But we were playing with such high intensity, and we were winning the set. All I wanted to do was win for my teammates.”

Penn State coach Russ Rose talks during a timeout
with setter Micha Hancock
-Volleyblog Seattle photo by Leslie Hamann

And Wisconsin came close. Its second-set late lead evaporated with two service errors and some furious Penn State defense down the stretch. The Badgers seemed in control of the fourth set, but it was Hancock who made the difference.

Because Hancock is a lefty, her powerful jump serve comes at defenders from an angle they rarely see. It’s a high risk/high reward skill that sometimes produced errors instead of aces. After missing a couple of serves, her coach, Russ Rose told Hancock during a timeout to switch to a safer serve.

“Sometimes players swear at the coaches,” Rose said, with a grin. “I can’t repeat how the conversation went.” Hancock, however, insisted she continue using a jump serve. “Then you might want to serve it in,” Rose told her.

So with her team trailing 22-23, she stepped to the line. Her first serve, an ace, forced a Wisconsin timeout. Her second serve, barely handled by the Badgers, was over-passed for a Slay kill, forcing a second timeout. Her third serve? Another ace, setting up the final rally, and a Penn State victory.

“This was a match we had to grind out against a really good opponent,” said Rose. “It was hard to win this championship.”

See also:
Volleyball fans do Seattle proud

NCAA | Wisconsin vs Penn State volleyball: Badgers dreamed it could happen

Seattle hosts 2013's final volleyball match 

• #12 Wisconsin vs. #2 Penn State | December 21 | 6:30 PM (Pacific) | Key Arena, Seattle | ESPN2

NCAA | Penn State volleyball overwhelms Washington

A single serve may have set the tone for a decisive defeat

• #2 Penn State def. #3 Washington 3-0 (25-14, 25-13, 25-16)
• #12 Wisconsin vs. #1 Texas | December 21 | 6:30 PM (Pacific) |Key Arena, Seattle | ESPN2

NCAA | Washington vs Penn State played memorable match the last time out

“Courtney Thompson just kicked our butts,” remembers a former Penn State star

• #12 Wisconsin vs. #1 Texas | December 19 | 4:30 PM (Pacific) |Key Arena, Seattle
• #2 Penn State vs. #3 Washington | December 19 | 6:30 PM (Pacific) |Key Arena, Seattle

NCAA | Final Four teams all turned losses into winning lessons

Washington, Wisconsin, Texas and Penn State each faced turning points that pointed to this week's Championships

• #12 Wisconsin vs. #1 Texas | December 19 | 4:30 PM (Pacific) |Key Arena, Seattle | ESPN2
• #2 Penn State vs. #3 Washington | December 19 | 6:30 PM (Pacific) |Key Arena, Seattle | ESPN2

NCAA | Washington volleyball jumps to #3 in national media poll

AVCA poll elevates Penn State #1 and Cinderella team San Diego #2

Washington volleyball schedules powerful Penn State in preseason

see also:  Filling in the blanks for Washington's 2012 volleyball schedule
Pac-12 Volleyball: An RPI upgrade?

Huskies will also face Purdue and Long Beach State

Two volleyball giants—Washington and Penn State—will square off this September in State College, Pennsylvania. [update: see: Who are volleyball's giants?]

The marquee match promises both a peek back at history and a preview of college volleyball’s future.

Special Report: Why fewer women are coaching D1 volleyball

IN THE PAST 15 YEARS, THE PERCENTAGE OF WOMEN COACHING WOMEN’S D1 VOLLEYBALL TEAMS HAS PLUMMETTED—FROM 62% TO 47%. MORE THAN EVER, MALE HEAD COACHES DOMINATE THE WOMEN’S GAME … A TREND NOT SEEN IN OTHER D1 TEAM SPORTS. WHY IS THIS HAPPENING IN VOLLEYBALL? A VOLLEYBLOG SEATTLE SPECIAL REPORT.

• Update: Kathy DeBoer, Executive Director of the American Volleyball Coaches Association, reacts to this report. See AVCA Director: “We don’t have a lot of good solutions”
• Correction: Apologies for misspelling the last name of Florida Coach Mary Wise.

Last season, every Pac-10 women’s volleyball head coach was a man. This season, one-quarter of the Pac-12 is run by women. Two of those coaches—Utah’s Beth Launiere and Colorado’s Liz Kritza will be in Seattle this weekend to face the Washington Huskies. Launiere and Kritza will also meet WSU’s first-year coach Jen Greeny this weekend in Pullman; Greeny is the third member of the Pac-12’s small, but growing, coaching sorority.

From zero to 25 percent: Sounds like real progress for women seeking top volleyball jobs. But across the country, the trend is decidedly in the other direction. D1 women’s volleyball is increasingly a man’s game.

Volleyblog Seattle gleaned numbers from a recent NCAA report titled Race and Gender Demographics 2009-2010. We found that the percentage of female head coaches in Division 1 volleyball has plummeted since 1995, from 62% to 47% last season. No other D1 women’s team sport has experienced anything close to this gender shift.

“It’s one of the very few sports where, since Title IX, there’s fewer women head coaches than there were before,” says Shannon Ellis, head coach at Seattle University. “That’s surprising to a lot of people.”

“Women are getting into the volleyball profession after college, and then, at some point, we have a high rate of attrition,” says Utah’s Launiere. “We’re losing them before they get to become D1 head coaches.”

“It seems like the higher the strength of the conference, the fewer and fewer female coaches you find,” says Colorado’s Kritza.

What’s happening in volleyball? And why? Ellis, Launiere and Kritza revealed some intriguing theories during conversations this week with Volleyblog Seattle.

63 Losers

You don't want to go there.

Your teenage daughter is in her bedroom, door closed, sobbing. Her heart is broken (boyfriend? cut from team?), but she needs her space.

63 times every postseason, reporters file into the post-match press room. One of the teams has just ended its season.

You don't want to go there.

It starts easily enough, as an NCAA representative sets out name placards for the winning team (or, in NCAA-speak, the "advancing team.") The victorious head coach says a few words, the players smile and giggle through their valedictory, then bound from the room.

At that point, you'd like to close the door. Another group of girls (the non-advancing team) is about to enter, and its obvious they need their space.

I've covered dozens of NCAA volleyball post-match press conferences. Without fail, one or more sportwriters with little experience covering women's one-loss-and-you're-out competitions squirms at the sight: red eyes, tear-stained cheeks, distant stares. They're familiar with a certain reaction from defeated male athletes--exhaustion, defiance--but rarely tears. The different display of emotion from female athletes leaves much of the press corps uncomfortable and uncertain. The silence after a women's volleyball match can be deafening.

You can tell a lot about a volleyball coach by comparing how he or she handles these media sessions. Jim McLaughlin (University of Washington) and John Dunning (Stanford) carry themselves almost the same way after either a win or a loss: quiet, understated, focused on the athletes. John Cook (Nebraska) and Russ Rose (Penn State) can be decidedly curt after a loss, though I've never seen either veer into poor sportsmanship. Younger coaches are often estatic after a win and look wiped out after losing.