Boys Volleyball Championship Game 1

[wjvolleyball]

I am creating this post as a spectator of the match this evening. Of course I am not a professional at all and just want to give the players and coaches their due acknowledgement. However, I do not know some of their names so I do apologize ahead of time. Please feel free to comment on anything as this is all an open discussion.

Game 1:
Rockets:

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#8 (Kevin Degan?)Great leadership on the court. Gave a high five to each of his players after every point. Positioning was great and was very aggressive by hitting the third ball as opposed to bumping it over.

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#22 Controlled his sets well. Kept the offense simple and clean. He did not try to push the ball.

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#14 A huge motivation boost for the team. There were quite a few rallies and he was in the middle of almost all of them. Came up with big points at big times.

Coach Matlocks team was hustling all over the place. Every player on the court clearly knew the basics of volleyball.
Blazers:

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#15 (Willy Li) Great setting. Placed the ball where no other setter in the county can.

The Blazers needed someone else to step up in the game. Way too many unforced errors and I feel as though it was a result of their warm-ups. Rather than warming up their shoulders and placing balls; they just tried to whack it as hard as possible which continued into Game 1. Too many bump hits over the net. They needed to be aggressive on the third hit.

[Boys Player]

you forgot to mention #4 on Rocket, Chang i think he was beast out there with his passing and hitting,

Btw Rocket wins 3-0

[wjvolleyball]

True #4 definetly had a great game. He should be mentioned and thanks for catching the error of not posting the score.

As for the passing I must mention that in the entire match, both teams combined had maybe four, 3 passes. (3 passes means that a setter has the ability to set 3 hitters perfectly. This statistic measures the passers efficiency)

A way you can see this is by how many times the middle hits a "one ball". Clearly both teams had the ability to do this but the passes were not there. Without a doubt they passed pretty good,getting 2 passes almost every time but I would not say either team passed great.

[Boys Player]

well both team can hit really good i went in this game thinking that Blair would Dominate RM. But after watching game 1 i was really surprised.

[blairfan]

i know this is more of an excuse than a reason... but i think after the first mishap of blairs middle with his unfortunate fall, that changed the whole momentum of the game. I honestly think if blairs middle would have put the ball down on that hit, it would've been a totally different game but we'll never know now.

[one]

May 14, 2009 20:52:38 GMT -5 wjvolleyball said:

As for the passing I must mention that in the entire match, both teams combined had maybe four, 3 passes. (3 passes means that a setter has the ability to set 3 hitters perfectly. This statistic measures the passers efficiency)

A way you can see this is by how many times the middle hits a "one ball". Clearly both teams had the ability to do this but the passes were not there. Without a doubt they passed pretty good,getting 2 passes almost every time but I would not say either team passed great.

I am not sure we were watching the same match. Although Blair committed many middle attack errors ( 7 or 8), they also scored at least 8 quick-hit points from the middle. In order to do this, they need at least 16 3 passes. On the RM side, they also scored about 7 points hitting ones as well as 3 or 4 miss connects. This amounts to another 10 or 11 3 passes. If you add the other three passes that setter choose to set outside or weak side instead of middle, I believe there are at least 50 3 passes both teams combined. How did you come up with 4 combined 3 passes. If there is a video online for tonight's match, maybe we will not need to describe our own versions. Blair's passing may be less consistent than RM, but there are still good passes here and there. If you would remember, the very first Blair's pass was a perfect 3. Willy set middle, but the middle slipped and missed, but that does not take away it was a 3 pass.

I thought Blair lost mainly because they missed too many serves and RM made less overall unforced errors. Both teams have a lot of good hits as well as some hitting errors, but RM seemed to have less hitting errors and they played much better defense in terms of blocking and digging. As there were not that many spectacular hits, the diggings may appear to be easy. However, a dig is a dig. A point is a point.

Not to take away from RM, I still believe this year's final four teams are somewhat even. Each is capable of and deserved to be the county champion. RM just peaked at the right moment and performed best as a team in its last two matches.