Evaluating Women's Volleyball Entering B1G Play

With Big Ten play starting this weekend (USC, UCLA), where does this team stand after their ten non-conference matchups? …it’s kind of hard to tell! But I think we’ve seen enough of the new team makeup to make some worthwhile observations.

I remain impressed by Addie Lyon, who is making the most of a very difficult situation. She’s been a very good decision maker, but is still working on building that chemistry with her teammates (which makes sense, given how the season has played out). The timing between her and her hitters is just a fraction of a second off sometimes, and that fraction of a second often means the difference between a kill and an error or an easily dug ball. There’s nothing that anyone really needs to do any differently to fix this, it’s something that can only get better with experience and time. Lyon is on the shorter side (5’9) and isn’t as effective as a blocker (or a blocking threat) as setters 6 foot and over, but that is far from a fatal flaw, it’s just something that the team need to continue to adjust to. That being said, she had a fantastic block on Sunday against Central Michigan!