NCAA Girls
January 2, 2024
Our vacation hiatus is over, however volleyball didn’t care.
Not even on January 1, when the remainder of the sports activities world was targeted on soccer.
No, on Monday the 2022 Large Ten participant of the yr and a first-team VolleyballMag.com All-American, Taylor Landfair, stated she was transferring to Nebraska.
It comes on the heels of a season during which Landfair and her crew struggled and the 6-foot-5 outdoors hitter noticed her stats drop significantly. Extra on Landfair and others making strikes follows.
Since our final report there have been teaching hires, convention strikes by the Pac-2, and a disturbing story about Idaho volleyball by the Orange County Register.
Rush hour within the switch portal
Landfair is headed to Nebraska, a crew that misplaced within the NCAA nationwide title match to Texas with no seniors. There have been 4 outdoors hitters on that roster, together with VBM second-team All-American freshman Harper Murray, juniors Ally Batenhorst and Lindsay Krause, and sophomore Hayden Kubik, who has entered the portal herself.
In 2022, Landfair had 479 kills (4.35/set) and hit .257 to go together with 25 aces and 72 blocks. This previous season, she had 361 kills in three extra units performed (3.19/set), 35 aces and 54 blocks. She had her greatest digs whole of her profession, 229 (2.03).
It will be arduous to think about Landfair not taking the opposite outdoors spot reverse Murray.
Value noting is that Texas outdoors hitter Jenna Wenaas is a Minnesota switch, and so was Carter Sales space, the beginning center for Wisconsin, which Texas beat within the nationwide semifinals.
After Texas — with a roster that for the second straight championship yr was loaded with key transfers — beat Nebraska, the final query of the post-match information convention went to Prepare dinner:
“In what methods has Texas set the bar that you simply and different groups need to match now?” he was requested.
The veteran coach, who has gained NCAA titles in 2000, 2006, 2015 and 2017, replied:
“I’ve received to consider that. However you take a look at tonight’s match, I imply, they’ve received half their beginning crew are transfers. They’re all fourth- and fifth-year gamers, aside from Ella, the setter, who did an amazing job.
“In order that’s how they’ve been constructing their crew. That’s how they constructed final yr’s crew. I like what we’re doing. I like recruiting youngsters and making an attempt to make them be nice.”
As VBM contributor Lincoln Arneal famous in Huskers Illustrated: Final yr’s (Nebraska) crew featured Florida switch Merritt Beason, who earned first-team All-American honors. Earlier groups included center blocker Kaitlyn Hord (Penn State), center blocker Kayla Caffey (Missouri) and out of doors hitter Lexi Solar (Texas).
Kubik shouldn’t be the one Husker leaving. Redshirt freshman proper facet Caroline Jurevicius has transferred to Penn State and junior center Maggie Mendelson, who additionally performed basketball, is within the portal.
However the switch portal is like Ginsu Knives. Wait, there’s extra …
The largest transfer earlier than Landfair was Reagan Rutherford from Kentucky to Texas. Rutherford, who shall be a grad scholar, is a left-handed proper facet and a VBM fourth-team All-American who will change Molly Phillips at Texas. Phillips is transferring on to play seaside at USC.
Texas can be getting Baylor’s Averi Carlson, a 5-11 setter who shall be a junior. She is going to again up Texas setter Ella Swindle, a freshman who had a breakout NCAA Event.
A giant setter transfer was made by Argentina Ung, a grad scholar who shouldn’t be from Argentina however Mexico. She transferred to Arizona State. The 6-footer had her greatest season in 2023 for a Washington State crew that made it to the third spherical of the NCAA Event. She was an AVCA honorable-mention All-American and has Mexican national-team expertise. ASU additionally picked up West Virginia outdoors Bailey Miller. She led the Mountaineers in kills in 2022 and was second this previous season with 339.
Wisconsin’s Ella Wrobel, a 6-4 outdoors hitter and like Landfair from Plainfield, Illinois, has transferred to Ohio State. Wrobel performed in 9 units in 2022 and didn’t play in 2023.
Teaching carousel
Shannon Hunt is headed to Nevada.
Hunt has spent her entire life in Washington, the previous 13 years at Washington State, the place she was an assistant to Jen Greeny, her former WSU teammate. Greeny left to take over at West Virginia and WSU was left with out the Pac-12.
Hunt, a star outdoors at Washington State, coached at two totally different excessive colleges in Washington earlier than rejoining Greeny in Pullman in 2011.
Hunt replaces Lee Nelson, the coach for 9 years. Final season, Nevada completed 7-22, 3-15 within the Mountain West.
Radford employed Chris Hertel, who had been an assistant on the Virginia faculty from 2011-18. He spent the previous 5 seasons as an assistant at his alma mater, New Mexico State. Radford completed 6-17 final season, 5-9 within the Large South. Sherisa Livingston then resigned after 4 seasons.
Among the many jobs nonetheless open is Northwestern of the Large Ten.
WSU, OSU to WCC
The Pac-12 is not any extra. The Pac-2 needed to do one thing. The information launch from the West Coast Convention:
The West Coast Convention has introduced the addition of Oregon State College and Washington State College as affiliate members throughout 12 sports activities for a two-year time period, starting with the 2024-25 educational yr.
The WCC prolonged invites to OSU and WSU in 12 sports activities, with each establishments set to compete as affiliate members in males’s basketball, girls’s basketball, girls’s soccer, volleyball, males’s golf, girls’s golf, girls’s cross nation and ladies’s rowing. Oregon State can even take part within the Convention in males’s soccer and softball, and Washington State can even compete within the WCC in girls’s tennis and males’s cross nation.
Disturbing report about Idaho
Veteran and award-winning investigative sportswriter Scott M. Reid wrote a damning piece that printed Saturday within the Orange County Register about Idaho coach Chris Gonzalez.
From the story:
The incident is a part of a sample of alleged abuse by Gonzalez, a former U.S. nationwide crew coach, outlined to the Southern California Information Group by six Idaho gamers on the 2023 roster, three former gamers, and a college worker, who allege Gonzalez bodily abused and bullied gamers, pressured injured gamers to play and practice towards the orders of the varsity’s sports activities drugs employees, frequently disadvantaged gamers of meals on street journeys, physique shamed gamers, made racially insensitive and inappropriate feedback to gamers, and pressured sports activities drugs employees to share confidential details about gamers’ weight.
In interviews, letters, emails, formal complaints, confidential college paperwork and voice recordings of Gonzalez, athletic director Terry Gawlik, and different athletic division and college administration officers, the gamers allege that Gonzalez, a longtime fixture on the Southern California volleyball scene and as soon as thought of one of many school recreation’s rising teaching stars, has created an surroundings the place he targets particular gamers for nearly every day bullying and even bodily abuse, the place gamers suffered dozens of avoidable accidents from overtraining or as a result of he ignored the directions of medical doctors, trainers and a sports activities biomechanics professional, withheld meals from the crew to the purpose the place all 9 present and former gamers stated they have been always hungry and routinely performed and practiced whereas feeling light-headed or dizzy, suffered tunnel imaginative and prescient, and sometimes felt that they have been on the verge of passing out or blacking out.
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