Saturday championship links
Match is at 2:30 p.m. HST
Available on OC 224 (ESPN 2)
BYU is offering radio at
http://www.byuradio.org/listen
online espn link is
http://espn.go.com/watchespn/index/_/id/2188024/2014-NCAA-Women’s-Volleyball-Championship
COMMENTS
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Go Blue! Wait, isn’t Penn St also blue?
PSU has just too many weapons for BYU. You can’t really win it all with weak spots, and BYU OH2 is just not very good, and Alohi is too green.
can byu beat the boss team?
better yet: cinderella beat the final boss?
to be determined…
PSU’s tournament experience paying off…BYU playing shell-shocked…
a tricky ace dealts the death blow. cinderella has died.
penn st just destroyed byu at the end.
Micah Hancock and Penn St just dominant.
Watching the championship match made me wonder; will Hawai’i ever make it back to the championship match. And if so, will they be able to compete?
Russ Rose’s teams have won 6 out of the last 8 NCAA championships. And he is a later bloomer. He started at Penn St. in 1979 or 35 years ago. Made the Finals in 1993, 1997 and 1998. Won his first championship in 1999. Didn’t win again until 8 years later in 2007. Then won in 08,09,10, 13 and 2014.
Seven total championships. From 1999, every time his team made the Finals, they have won the championship . If he looks like a professor, he is one at Penn State.
In sales and marketing, the saying is that the three most important factors are location, location, and location. In volleyball and almost all collegiate sports the key to winning consistently is recruiting, recruiting, and recruiting. When year after year you have as recruits top ten rated players, including the number ones, then like Penn State you win national championships year after year. For me it is frustrating. But give credit to Coach Rose. He is the champion recruiter with Stanford and Texas coaches close behind. There are a tremendous number of BCS schools but only a few are traditional volleyball powers. Sigh.
It is evident that Russ Rose keeps up with every nuance that is developed in women’s volleyball. He correctly utilizes his opposite, current with blocking techniques, obviously does his own scouting, textbook digging and passing platforms, rotations and positions are ingrained in the players.
So when other coaches whine that Russ wins because of the talent of his players, they are ignorant of his coaching knowledge and attention to detail. As an example, note that Hawaii finally learned the correct use of the opposite this season. For 40 years they played left, left, left. I’m not living in a glass house but I knew that a 5′ set (right side) is better than a 20′ set (left side) years ago.
well the queen lions headed by the king lion (rose) roared in set 3 crushing the cougars. russ is a tactical mastermind who started winning not too long ago, built up a dynasty from behind, caught up with stanford, and finally surpassed them all.
yes russ may as well be a professor of womens volleyball.
anyways folks volleyball season is over.
next up for na wahine volleyball: moloka’i clinic and scrimmage, hopefully adolpho, mendoza and long is there. and the moloka’i thing is set and ready to go.
also next: sandbows, who will succeed scott wong?
2016 is UH’s year with this lineup.
OH Mitchem
OH Granato/Greeley
MB Maglio
MB Castillo
S Iosia
Opp Taylor
L Kahakai
will be a great team!!
how about 2015 UH team?
also an incredible note on the championship match: penn st outblocked the #1 blocking team with a giant player. na wahine needs to augment the kind of offense and mobility like penn st has to compete. nevermind hit against byus block or trying to avoid washingtons. sunder or smash through the block. all armor (blocking) does not win.
Cinderella was foiled by a rose .
How does Rose get his teams to peak at the very right time ?
Hopefully, Shoji books up on technique (blocking, hitting, digging, setting), instead of golf. The players need to know the latest technique in order to improve.
Previously, new players just watched the starters. He relied on the players teaching themselves in the early years, but that won’t cut it anymore. He also needs to investigate other offenses instead of his slow, high and wide offense.
19. Offense is dictated by the type of setters he has, Mafua ran a very fast offense, Did you forget those super quick sets to Kaufman/Danielson? USC is the team that runs a slow and wide offense. UH was slower than usual but still faster than a lot of teams, like Duke.
I think the hiring of the new associate will be big . If UH gets someone good who has aspirations of being the heir apparent that will hustle recruiting wise. UH could be on the upswing. they have the talent (just need the setters to improve a lot)
State plays a very quick game to the pins. BYU’s middles were always late on the blocks to the outsides. I wish Hawaii could speed up their game to the OH’s. Go Bows
21. To speed up up your offense you need an excellent setter like Hancock, and good passing. Hopefully UH will have that when Iosia and l Libero/DS Emma Smith come on board, with Kahakai and Greeley/Granato doing most of the passing.
18. instead of snow white goes to sleep by poison apple. its cinderella got killed by a rose.
penn st noticeably was getting stronger and stronger as the season progresses and even after some defeats early season. this was well noticeable when they were playing against wisconsin in the quarterfinals, after losing the opening set, they got stronger. and this is despite the wisconsin setter got injured. if anyone was to take down penn st, it would be wisconsin (if lauren carlini didnt get injured), ucla, nebraska, or maybe texas. this year penn st punched out wisconsin and overran ucla. byu upset or got rid of nebraska and texas so they were up alone to defend against penn st which penetrates byus number 1 blocking.
Yes, you may not like Penn State, but what Russ Rose is doing at Penn State is simply dominating. Hoping Dave strings together a couple of runs at the national championship before he retires.
23. wildcard; blunite, warriorfan, eMpTy, hatakeman, others:
Snow White was waiting for the handsome prince but got only the thorny rose professor with glasses, folder and pen.
BYU had a shot at the second set but Hamson committed too many errors and they lost 26-24 in the second set. From there they went down rapidly.
As for Penn State, success breeds success. Now the best players in the nation will want to play for Penn State unless they don’t like the coach. Dunning is a a more pleasant personality but he can’t lead his team to any more national championships. Maybe next year he’ll luck out while Penn State is in transition as Dunning will have four great seniors.
As for the more distant future regarding Penn State, Russ Rose is getting old and at some point his health will fail and he’ll have to step down. He could even suffer a sudden heart attack being so grossly overweight. Then Penn State will slowly come back down to earth and won’t be a dynasty much longer.
Gosh, already predictions for Hawaii’s lineup in 2016? First Norene Iosia has to sign up. She can still change her mind. Don’t put the cart before the horse yet. Meanwhile, let’s hope that in 2015 Tayler Higgins will improve. She knows she has to for the team to do better. Remember that Tai Manu-Olevao improved considerably in transition between sophomore and junior year.
26. BIVbfan. Russ is 61 years old, Shoji is 68 . You say he is old, that’s why he sits down with his folder and pen, but he still stands up okay during time outs.
26. First of all someone asked if UH will ever be back to the final. I gave him the lineup that will be UH’s best chance , which is in 2016. Lots of things can happen until then, but I still think UH will have its best chance that season.
And when was the last time a verbal comitment to the wahine volleyball team changed their mind before signing day? It just does not happen.
27. Interesting, I found out his age only now when I checked Russ Rose’s bio on Wikipedia. I had thought he was much older. However, Shoji is a lot thinner and looks healthier. Age is not everything. A healthy lifestyle actually counts more. We shall see how long Russ Rose will last.
The trick is getting the NCAA committee to “bracket” you so that you will have a cake walk to the Round of 16 or better yet to the Elite 8. Year after year. No such cake walk exists, you say? Lol.
True, many thought last year’s Wahine team should have taken out BYU in 3 and not the other way around in the subregionals, but in retrospect BYU was flying beneath the radar and had a game plan that was executed to perfection by the right players in the right position at the right time.
Speaking of Team Shoji, no losing coach should be saying he lost to an unbeatable team. Simple truth, the UH lost because Team Shoji had the wrong game plan. Will the Bows ever become nationally relevant again? Same time, next year for the answer to that question.
I think that it’s extremely poor taste to ponder how long “Russ Rose will last.” And don’t be so sure that PSU will come back to earth. John Dunning led both UOP & Stanford to championships his first year at the helm & Mike Sealy did the same for UCLA his second year. On the men’s side David Knifin did it for Irvine.
It is my hope that Coach Dave sticks around until at least 2016 because, (although I would rather not) I agree that the 2016 team that warriorfan put up will be a GREAT team. The only problem is that this year Texas got all the graduating seniors so they will also be one of the top three then. Recruiting is always the best way to build greatness. UH will always have trouble against the big five conferences because they have millions to throw around to maintain the types of facilities that the top athletes of today demand. That is why some of the best escape from Hawai’i to the mainland, the local talent has lived all their life with sunshine and think that a degree from Stanford will get them a lot farther in the future. Who can blame them. I went to UH for the Bodysurfing and stayed for the sun. But like many locals I wanted to be able to live in the middle class and could not afford to stay in Hawai’i forever. However, I will ALWAYS be a BOW and as always ” GO BOWS “.
26 and 29. you got some beef with professor of womens volleyball rose dont ya? rather impatient too. hoping he is quickly out of the picture and then penn st comes down. i agree with you that success breeds success but i doubt removing the headpenn (headpin) will make penn st more controllable. not like somebody now couldnt. ucla under sealy ended their four year dynasty and texas got into the fray. and even wisconsin posed somewhat of a threat to them. stanford is also a maybe providing they can get stronger all the way and not climax their strength (first lost to washington) while penn st keeps getting stronger.
as for shoji, he needs to train up his team (and perhaps himself) to play like champions (including that night vs duke and to some extent vs washington). no more ‘im slow’ or ‘too young of a team excuses’. play like champs not chumps.
congrats to RR/PSU for another WVB championship(and all the other “also rans”) especially the teams that the NCAA always let HOST. Very few “non elite” programs will ever get the chance because of the present way the NCAA does things (seedings and match setup) In a perfect world , every school should be given ( a random ) chance to HOST ! Nuff said (will always be a WAHINE fan , but am just fed up with the way the NCAA screws-up)
11. turns out russ rose is a professor at penn state. he teaches 1 class on coaching and is a physical educator…with disclaimer on details.
another point of interest or whatever:
penn sts libero dom was the one who served up the tricky ace on match point to complete the domination on byu.
oh also somebody complained espn always showing penn st has this dynasty or whatever thats annoying. didnt happen. though it may have mentioned though not shown a couple times.
After this year’s Final Four, my thoughts on UH winning another NCAA championship are:
Penn State has a great libero. She was flying around in the matches against Sanford and BYU. Gotta find another Ali Longo type libero!
UH needs to get taller to win a nation championship. Any player under 6’2″ in the front row will be a target. The final four teams are getting taller and taller each year.
The final four teams commit very few errors in serving and passing. UH needs to improve in both areas as well.
The UH teams projected for 2015 and 2016 will be good enough to win the Big West and a few rounds in the NCAA, but honestly, I’d be delightfully surprised if those teams can reach the Final Four.
Only time will tell.
As everyone in this blog is projecting that the 2016 team will be of a championship team caliber, they will have a better chance if UH will try to bid for one of the 4 regional sites as yet to be determined with the final 4 to be held in Columbus, Ohio. For 2015, the sites are already chosen – Lexington, KY, Austin, Texas, San Diego, CA and Des Moines, IA. with the final 4 in Omaha, NE.
31. —The last time UH reached the Final Four was 2009, not that long ago ? On that team was Danielson, Ferrell, Hewitt, Kaufman, Ka’aihue, Mafua, Cubi-Otineru,Brandt, et al. Which team did UH lose to in those Semi-Finals after winning the first set ? The team coached by “ramblin” Rose .
The last time UH reached the Final two was 1996. Ljungquist,Crawford, Ah-Mow, et al. ,if internet info is correct.
#26. Whether Iosia follows through on her commitment, Shoji’s future, and the future of all UH sports will likely be determined this next Legislative session.
So far, it looks like UH’s plight is falling on deaf ears. The informational briefing with the House Finance Committee did not result in a warm reception, and it sounds like the new Gov. also has not voice any support.
40. yes, the last time UH was in the national final was 96 in Cleveland. Ljungquist was named the national player of the year. and she was very ill that week. got stuffed by Stanford the first play of the match and pretty much set the tone for the match.
2009 wasn’t that long ago. and as others have mentioned, sometimes it’s all about the bracket. 2011 was a travesty of a regional here with SC, Hawaii and Pepperdine all deserving to be in the final four.
2016 would be nice to make a bid. I just don’t see the UH leadership doing it. the AD would have to sign off on it and would he do that as pretty much a lame duck?
We are in the news again, with nary a solution in sight. Who “blinks” first?
http://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/ncaafb/report-hawaii-asking-for-dollar6-million-bailout/ar-BBh2I8Y
34. schools have to submit a bid and then the NCAA accepts it. That several of the same teams seem to always host is another benefit of having BCS/Power-5 money.
I thought the NCAA was considering going back to the top 4 seeds hosting regionals which I think might be a good idea, although getting top 4 in the rpi will be hard in the big west.
Technique seems to be the secret of Russ Rose’s success. As matches go on girls tire, minds go blank, bodies fatigue; however, technique remains after all else fails.
Penn State players exhibit proper technique even in 4th and 5th games. In contrast, Hawaii expects players to already know how to play, so practice is exactly what you see in warmups.
a couple keys to russ roses tactical mastermind:
vs byu: take hamson out of play especially once isolated, hit the ball to force her to dig, then stack the block on her while proceeding to go after the weaker pin OH
he mentioned this on the broadcast with espn during a timeout: eliminate their middle hitter. byu has middle blockers, no MHs unlike penn sts senior nia grant. but by him saying that, he perceived byus middle blockers to be taken out of play.
Article on Heather Boyan and her going to UH for sand volleyball
http://www.nwitimes.com/sports/columnists/hillary-smith/hillary-smith-munster-grad-finds-dream-in-the-sand/article_a1128b8e-eef1-5c76-ad4b-5eb68f22e98f.html