Sooner Volleyball-Big 12 Play this Week-Wins over West Virginia

[OUBeliever56A]

Sooner Volleyball - Big 12 Play this Week - Kansas and West Virginia

The young Oklahoma Sooner Volleyball Team host their next two Big 12 Volleyball matches in Norman at McCasland Field House. Tonight the Sooners face Kansas at 6 PM. On Saturday the Sooners host West Virginia at 1 PM. Here is the staff writers article about this week's Volleyball action for the Sooners.

https://soonersports.com/news/2022/9/27 ... -to-norman

Kansas is 1-1 in the conference and 11-2 overall. Kansas lost to Texas and defeated Kansas State, both in 5 set matches. West Virginia is 0-1 in conference and 6-7 overall. West Virginia lost to Texas Tech in a 5 set match also. After starting their season 10-2, Oklahoma lost to Texas last Saturday in 3 sets in Austin.

Both matches can be watched via ESPN+ if for some reason you cannot attend the matches. The atmosphere in McCasland Field House can be exciting when the Sooners have a good crowd to watch the Volleyball Team compete. The action is worth the price of admission.

The lineup for the Sooners has settled in to have 6 sophomores and freshman on the floor at all times with 1 or 2 upperclassmen. There are 2 or 3 rotation patterns where no Sooner on the floor is older than a sophomore. The Sooners are very young but still having success.

After their loss to #1 Texas, the Sooner's service game and return game will be the focus of where improvement is needed. While you cannot just 'lob' in serves to make sure you do not give a point away, you also cannot deliver serves that do not make opposing team play the ball. That is the challenge for the Sooners. They need to find 6 players that can deliver strong challenging serves with a higher rate of success. The Sooners need more Service Aces and less Service Errors.

The Kansas match is an important match for the Sooners. If the Sooners can post a win against a tough Kansas squad, they will re-new their potential for a strong Big 12 campaign. The West Virginia matchup will be a second challenge for the Sooners this weekend, but win against the Mountaineers at home is a must for the Sooners. If the Sooners can have a 2-win week the Sooners could be in tie for 2nd place in the conference come Monday morning. It is one match at a time and one week at a time for the Sooners.

Good luck to the Sooner Volleyball Team this week!

Boomer Sooner!

[OUBeliever56A]

OU hosted Kansas in Volleyball on Wednesday night at McCasland Field House. Kansas blitzed the Sooners in 3 sets as they won 25-13, 25-17 and 25-17.

I knew the Sooners would have to play well to win over Kansas, but to me, the loss was surprising in how it occurred. In each set the Sooners were in the set and tied up to the 9-9, 13-13 and 10-10 mark of each set respectively. But at that point in all 3 sets the Jayhawks proceeded to go on a service run of several points that the Sooners could not slow down. In the 1st set, the Sooners were outscored 16-4, in the 2nd set, 12-4 and in the 3rd set, 15-7. Five players for Kansas were very impressive to me. Langs and Bien were both impressive at the net. Elnady and Turner were very impressive all-around players and earned important points for Kansas. Schultz was an impressive server also. Kansas is not as powerful as Texas is, but the Jayhawks are very good. Kansas hit .385% last night as they overshadowed the Sooners who hit .165%.

For OU, they were just not on their 'A' game last night. They did have their moments when they looked sharp but overall, things were just not quite there. Wilson led in points with 17 with Davison and Perkins adding 7 each. Perkins was the only Sooner with a hitting % above .250. Too many time the Sooners did not handle the ball well on the first touch. That lead to tough sets from Chamberlain who had to chase the ball off the first touch. I wish there was a stat for how many times a team gets a good attack ball set instead of a dink or push shot out of need to get the ball over the net. I felt OU had maybe half of their sets turn into push shots last night, especially in the last half of games.

Coach Gray-Walton tried to make a couple of changes by getting Davison into the first set and Carrington into the 2nd set but it did not change the outcome. Specialty players, Kaminski and Talpash led the Sooners with 11 serves a piece in the 3 sets. Neither had a service error. The rest of the Sooners had 27 serves with 6 errors and 1 ace. By contrast, Kansas had 4 players with 11 or more serves and as a team they only had 4 service errors 73 attempts. The Sooners also had 7 outright receive errors compared to only 1 for Kansas.

Elsewhere in Big 12 play, Texas Tech swept Kansas State in 3 sets and Iowa State downed Baylor 3 sets to 1. TCU and West Virginia play tonight.

The Sooners need to bounce back on Saturday and play much better as they face West Virginia at McCasland Field House at 1 PM.

Good luck to the Sooners as they try to post their first Big 12 victory on Saturday.

Boomer Sooners!

[OUBeliever56A]

Here is the staff writers article about the match with Kansas on Wednesday night.

https://soonersports.com/news/2022/9/28 ... ome-opener

Boomer Sooner!

[OUBeliever56A]

The Oklahoma Sooners Volleyball Team (now 11-4) earned its first Big 12 victory on Saturday afternoon as they defeated West Virginia (now 6-9) in 3-straight sets as they won 25-20, 25-18, 25-20 in McCasland Field House. Here is the staff writers article about the win for the Sooners VB Team.

https://soonersports.com/news/2022/10/1 ... 12-victory

There was a new wrinkle for in the lineup for the Sooners shown on Saturday. The starters were:

Setter - Chamberlain
Outside Hitters - Wilson, Preston
Middle Blocker - Oliver, Perkins
Libero - Kemohah
When Serving to Open Set - Defensive Specialist - Kaminski
When Receiving to Open Set - Outside Hitter - Shelton
Substitutes - Designated Server - Thompson, Outside Hitter - Davison

Davison subbed for Shelton to serve and play the back row. Shelton rotates back in when her spot rotates to the front row. (Davison did play the front row some.)
Kemohah is used to replace Perkins when she rotates to serve. Kemohah remains to play the back row. Perkins rotates back in when her spot rotates to the front row.
Thompson subs for Oliver to serve, then is replaced by Kemohah to play the back row. Oliver rotates back in when her spot rotates to the front row.
Chamberlain and Wilson play full time.

The wrinkle is two-fold. One, Thompson was in the lineup for all three sets. Two, the Perkins - Davison 'platoon' was consistently used in the three sets.

To me the plan on Saturday was an attempt to maximize the serving potential for the Sooners. With Kaminski, Wilson, Kemohah, Chamberlain, Thompson and Davison serving, the Sooners may have their best 6 servers being used. At times, Preston has shown well at the serving line but she was not used on Saturday. Talpash has served well at times also, but she sat out Saturday. The strategy did seem to work as the Sooners tallied 9 service aces and only had 3 service errors in the three sets. It was the second time all season that the Sooners had more aces than errors (8 and 6 vs Mississippi State). It was also the 3rd time that the Sooners had 9 or more aces (11 vs Fresno State, 9 vs Lipscomb).

I thought the strategy on substitutes also was successful in keeping 3 or 4 hitters on the floor at all times even when Chamberlain is on the front row as setter. That makes the Sooner offense more difficult to defend against with hitters coming off the back row at times. The back row players also were effective while receiving serve as they only had 3 receive errors which was only the fourth time the Sooners have had 3 or less receive errors for the season.

The Sooners offense was led by;

Wilson - 19 points with kills, 5 service aces and 2 assisted blocks.
Shelton - 9 points with 9 kills.
Perkins - 7 points with 6 kills and 2 assisted blocks.
Preston - 7 points with 7 kills.
Oliver - 5 points with 4 kills and 2 assisted blocks.
Davison - 3.5 points with 2 kills, 1 service ace and 1 assisted block.
Thompson - 2 points with 2 service aces.
Chamberlain - 1.5 points with 1 kill and 1 assisted block.
Kaminski - 1 point with 1 service ace.

On defense the Sooners tallied 30 digs with these individual totals. Kemohah 9, Chamberlain 6, Davison, Wilson, Kaminski with 4, Thompson 3.

On other thing that is a bit different with the Sooners in 2022 is that when Chamberlain is in rotation on the back row, the Setter is more involved with defense and executing digs on defense. When Chamberlain plays the ball on defense, She is able to move the ball to Kemohah to act as a second bump setter for the return kill. It lessens rotations and movement on defense.

The Sooners are now 1-2 (11-4 overall) in the Big 12. The schedule next week is a single game on Wednesday night against Baylor in Waco in an 8 PM game that will be on ESPNU. Baylor is 2-1 in the Big 12 and 13-2 overall. Baylor was ranked 13th at the beginning of the week before they lost to Iowa State 1-3 and then defeated Kansas 3-2. The road trip to Baylor will be a tough one for the Sooners. But the young Sooners need to take a step up on the road and pick up a win against good Big 12 teams. With the next two matches the following week against Texas Tech and Iowa State, the Sooners need to pick up a couple wins within these three matches to keep pace in the Big 12. Wednesday night against Baylor would be a great time to breakthrough with a big win on the road.

Boomer Sooner!

[AustinTXSooner]

This was a good match by the Sooners. We possibly had a regression in our blocking, but our serving was vastly improved. Megan Wilson is screaming missiles on her serves. In the first set, she had a serving run of maybe 8 points? I think there were at least 3 service aces in that run and the others were all hard to handle. On the ones they returned, WV often had to loft free balls back to our side.

I also noticed that Davison is being used primarily as a back row player now. When she and Wilson were next to each other on the back row, the communication was poor. She also collided with Thompson on one point. So it's a work in progress.

Shelton was on her power game in this match. She blew through some blocks. And she was getting up high. The rotation of Shelton and Preston is keep Davison off the front row.

It took an injury for her to start, but I think Chamberlain is playing better than Dunn was. As I was watching the match, I couldn't help but think about how much talent we got in the last recruiting class. We recruited over some of our previous starters. I have a similar feeling about the soccer team. The future looks good for this team.

[OUBeliever56A]

About Chamberlain and Dunn.

In the Crimson and Cream scrimmage it looked like there was going to be a legitimate competition between Dunn and Chamberlain. As you said, when Chamberlain got her first match start out west, Dunn was not dressed to play, indicating and injury.

I did notice that in the most recent matches that Dunn was 'dressed ready to play'. But on Saturday, Dunn was not wearing her long black tights as she usually does. She was wearing loose gym shorts on the sidelines and it looked like a different type of shirt from the uniforms.

I wish we knew what was wrong with Dunn. Just to be curious.

I think the two setters have a different way to set the ball differently. Chamberlain has the quick direct low set even across the front as well as the traditional high set to the sides. Dunn also began to add that set when she was playing early. I think the biggest difference in the two players is that Chamberlain is a little better on the defensive side and 'participates' more on digs allowing Kemohah to set the ball on the second touch. Chamberlain's serve is probably a little better also but Dunn did have her moments on her slow low serve just clearing the net.

Dunn may be a little better on the quick sneaky kill at the net than Chamberlain. Chamberlain does not look for it as much as Dunn though.

At least we know the Sooners have two people two fill the 'setters' position well if needed and if Dunn can play.

Boomer Sooner!