VB Update: Scrimmage Thoughts, Winter Season and More

Sorry for the long delay - I obviously haven’t done a season preview yet. Mostly it was because we didn’t know until a month or two ago if there would even be a season laid out, and until today I wasn’t yet sure when it was planned for. I think the info was out there, but the other part was that I’m not exactly in a sports mood that often, you know? Bigger things going on. And after the way football has played out so far, the prospect of writing a similar preview about volleyball and having it fall the same way was … not appealing.

HOWEVER. I got an email today from the new supervisor of operations, Amy Angelos, that said there would be a scrimmage at 3:00 PM today, here is Zoom information, would I be interested in watching. YES. YES I WOULD. (The email went out to season ticket holders and players’ families, since obvs you don’t want to make a Zoom call collapse, and they asked us not to share it on social. There were several reminders prior to the game to shut off our own video and sound so as to avoid overburdening the Zoom feed.)

The scrimmage was fun to watch, mostly because it was finally some live Purdue volleyball, but also because it was my first look at the four freshmen - well, three of them - since of course COVID canceled the spring scrimmage where I would have seen them originally. Also because I had missed the news that former Purdue All-American Val Nichol had returned as a volunteer coach! The Boilers were shorthanded for the scrimmage, so she actually suited up as an outside hitter (and, at one point, seemed to turn an ankle, but she was able to walk it off). She’s back in the US after five years in Europe for other reasons, too, which we’ll get to in a later section.

2013 third-team All-American OH/S; a hand injury limited her to OH action in 2014 but she still ended up as an honorable mention AA

Roster notes

Purdue now has 17 players on their roster (remember, NCAA volleyball caps women’s scholarships at 12; VB is a “head count” sport along with football and both men’s and women’s basketball, which means that Purdue can give any amount to their scholarship players but can’t give scholarship money to more than 12, so in practice it means they give 12 full rides), which will seem to be one short for those of you who followed last year’s team and recruiting class.

The Boilers have four incoming freshmen: DS Savana Chacon and MBs Molly Brown, Lourdes Myers, and Taylor Trammell. They’re at 17 because they lost three players to graduation: senior MBs Blake Mohler and Shavona Cuttino, plus sophomore S Joy Chen. Yes, a varsity athlete got her degree in two years. No, I have no idea how that works. I took 6 years to get three years’ worth of credits, I’m not the guy to ask. But it makes sense that she’d move on, since a) she’s probably moving straight into grad school and b) Shondell rarely plays his #2 setter and in all likelihood that would be Renner this season.

Anyway, the Good Gals were down to 14 for the scrimmage. L Marissa Hornung was in isolation after close contact with a COVID-positive person, OH Caitlyn Newton was rehabbing an undisclosed injury, Ava Torrance was present but finishing up her “quarantine” which I assume means that she’d been exposed to a positive person and was cleared to mask up but not play, and Lourdes Myers is still recovering from shin splints and is close to 100% but not cleared for action yet.

Yes, that makes 13. Nichol suited up, as mentioned above, to make 7 on a side so that the liberos could, well, be liberos. (Senior Jena Otec was one, not sure who the other was but I would guess sophomore Maddie Schermerhorn or junior Emma Terwilliger.) Unlike last year’s scrimmage, for this one they divided up into teams and did not mix them up much, aside from trading MB-ish players after the first set, I think swapping Trammell and Cleveland.

Redshirt freshman S Megan Renner is just now at 100% after knee surgery; no one else seems to be hurt at all, at least not noticeably, and Shondell didn’t mention any other injuries aside from Renner and Myers.

2021 recruiting class

Shondell mentioned that they would like to bring some seniors back for a fifth year if they’d be interested, but there hadn’t been any conversations yet. As you can imagine, that will be a little tricky for next season, although right now it’s not yet too big of a deal, since those fifth-year players would not count against scholarship limits (so Purdue could have 14 scholarship players in 2021). Down the road, it will probably not be a factor, since 2021 is the only season we know of that will ease the limits, and it’s hard to picture the Boilers keeping an extra 5 players around in 2022 or 2023 (since everyone gets an extra year, regardless of current classification) if they would come out of the normal 12 scholarships … plus you know how much it costs to go to school these days, and not many players may be inclined to stick around and pay their own way when they didn’t have to for the first four years. It’d be nice to have the NCAA wise up and always allow these extra years to be exempt, but I wouldn’t count on it, assuming the NCAA’s even around in four years.

The other factor is the impact it would have on incoming recruits, since the difference between a fifth-year starter and not a fifth-year starter is substantial in many cases. Along those lines, Purdue has signed two players for 2021, both with Boiler ties. With two more expected to commit at some point, Prep Volleyball has the 2021 class at #10, which is rarefied air, a continuation of recent stellar classes, and also fourth best in the conference (sigh).

Ali Hornung, #12 in the top 150 (Senior Ace ranking have been moved to the spring), is the younger sister of libero Marissa Hornung, but as you can tell from that lofty number, she’s not simply a legacy - she was a finalist for National Junior of the Year while at Providence in Clarksville, leading the team in kills and placing second in digs and service receptions, and was first-team All-State in 4A volleyball. If you’re thinking that Hornungs may be Purdue liberos like Cuttinos were Purdue MBs, well, that sounds just fine to me!

Raven Colvin, #42 in the top 150, isn’t a volleyball legacy; she’s the daughter of former Purdue football star Rosevelt Colvin. A track star in middle school, Raven switched to volleyball in eighth grade; I’m not going out on a limb much in saying that a multi-sport athlete who is elite in one sport is definitely a recruit worth landing. She hit .415 as a senior at Heritage Christian with 146 total blocks and, like Emma Ellis, has experience at both OH and MB.

In addition, Purdue has verbal commits from 6’1” OH Emily Rastovski (Morgan Township) and 6’0” S Sydney Yim (Newburyport, MA). Since volleyball signing lasts basically until fall practice starts, this isn’t unusual - we’ll likely see Welcome posts on Twitter et al eventually.

If nothing else, this is a good sign for what will hopefully be a normal 2021 season. With recruiting on fire and court results starting to come around, Purdue is definitely headed in the right direction.

Scrimmage thoughts

The two sides played two three-set matches, with the third set to 7 instead of 15. Shondell explained that because they hadn’t played any live matches (they would have played 28 by this point in a normal 2020!), he wanted the players to get something of the feeling of playing in those weekend tournaments, where you get your opening match and have to turn around and play again in the evening.

As you’d expect, they didn’t have a full support staff for safety reasons, so instead of a manned camera, they had a fixed camera at one end of the court. We could see most of the action, but it was zoomed in a bit too much to really see what was happening above the net, especially on the far side. Coaches were manning the lines and a small scoreboard, since the big one wasn’t in use, and instead of our usual PA announcer they had another staffer working the mic.

However, Shondell provided play-by-play and color commentary for most of the two matches. (The coaches weren’t actively coaching because they wanted the players to have to work through things themselves.) They did have up and down refs - again, staff members - but one interesting note was that they were encouraging players to make their own calls (net, etc) and that about 80% of them were into doing that. Not sure if they would do that during live matches as well, but if a coach were to do that it wouldn’t surprise me if it were Shondell.

I watched the first set pretty closely, as best I could, but got distracted in the second - this was during a workday, after all, and I had to do a couple of things that required attention. So I didn’t follow everything too closely, but fortunately, the PBP guy (see above) had that covered, so I’ll rely mostly on him for my takeaways.

• They have been working with the hitters on going high hands more often (swinging to try to drive the ball high off the blockers’ hands, where it’s more likely to deflect slightly and be hard to retrieve; Karch Kiraly will bring this up often during an NCAA telecast on ESPN) rather than going low into the block. If you watched any matches last year, you’ll know why this is a point of emphasis for Purdue.

• Two other things: they’ve been working with the setters on being more aggressive, dumping the ball over on second hit, but not directly to a defender (again, a problem with last year’s team). Both Bush and Renner played well and had some good attacks, which was nice to see. And the staff wants the setters to vary the height of their sets more: last season, everything was a 4* (high, arcing set, normally to the left pin), and this year they want more 1s (quick sets) and 2s (shorter sets near the setter).

• The service return game was excellent in the first match (no aces) but not as good in the second, probably due to both lack of focus and lack of live match play. Also, a number of players were having to serve for “real” when they didn’t have that chance last year, and it usually takes some time to get your live serves in play.

• Trammell’s name came up quite a bit, as did her wingspan (6’6”) and hands (biggest Shondell has seen at Purdue). She seems poised to take one of the MB starting spots left vacant after Mohler and Cuttino graduated, and if she lives up to her billing (#72 Senior Ace), the Boilers will be solid up the middle yet again. I don’t think I have ever seen a Purdue team that didn’t have great MBs.

*I’ll get to general terminology eventually! But one thing to know is that volleyball play calls are like football play calls in that seemingly every team does it a bit differently, so the best thing you can do is learn how your setter or your team calls them and focus on that. I think Purdue uses a 1-7 system for location, with 1 being the left pin, 7 being the right pin, and then 2 through 6 being roughly every 4 feet, with 4 in the middle. Hayley will usually be around the 5 or 6 spot, facing the 1. They use 1-4 for height, with 1 being almost a flat set for middles, 2 as a higher set for middles, 3 as a middle-high loop farther away, and 4 as the traditional high, long set.

A two-digit play will include location and height in that order, so the standard Purdue would be a 14 (1 pin, 4 height), with a bunch of 41 (low set to the middle) and some others thrown in there. Teams frequently abbreviate their most frequent sets, since you can easily gesture with one hand (watch the setter prior to the opposition serve) but not so much with two), so Purdue’s four main sets might be 14, 41, 52, and 74, which they might sign as 1/2/3/4.

OK, I’ll make it up to you. During a match, watch John on the sidelines. He’s typically the one that signals the location of the serve to the Purdue player who’s serving next. Location for service works like the positions on your side of the court: 1 is the server, then you count around in the order in which they’ll be serving, so 2 is in front of her, 3 is middle front, 4 is diagonally opposite the current server, 5 is the back corner opposite the server, and 6 is middle back. Since organized teams don’t return serve like we casual players do, the service location refers to the area on the court, not where a player is. You’ll see a lot of 1s and 5s, since those are the easiest areas to hit (back corners), and a good number of 2-3-4, float serves that should die in the front but all too often are easily returned. 6 is hard to sign because you have to sign twice; most of us would, anyway. It’s too bad that six-fingered men sometimes don’t turn out to be nice guys …

Projected 2020(1) season

How big is the biggest container of salt in your house? Take this with that amount of salt - one grain won’t cut it this year. In addition to injuries, COVID is everywhere - literally - and there’s no reason to believe that volleyball will avoid it, even if universities wise up and go remote for the spring semester.

Schedule

The Boilers will practice through 11/24, then head home with the rest of the students and not return in 2020. Big Tenteen play will open January 22, so the Good Gals will be back not too soon before that. One concern Shondell had was about the ability of players to train and stay healthy while at home, since those environments can be really different from being in a semi-bubble with the rest of the team on/near campus. I’d expect it to be similar to football, where the first few matches will look a bit ragged and then things will kind of settle down as long as the team stays COVID-free.

The schedule hasn’t been published yet and may not be ready until things settle down some more? I’m not sure. I do know that Shondell mentioned that instead of the semi-traveling-partner system in years past, they’ll be heading to one destination at a time and playing two matches there, so for example, they might travel to Madison and play Wisconsin on a Friday and again on a Saturday. That will help limit potential exposure and also cut travel costs - most travel will be by bus, both for financial and health purposes. (Airplanes may filter the air well, but airports do not.) Hopefully that will mean no trips to Maryland or Rutgers; Wisconsin and Iowa are far enough away, Minnesota and Nebraska might be quite a reach. (Penn State is about the same distance as Minnesota; Maryland is maybe an hour farther than Nebraska, with Rutgers an hour farther than that.)

BTN is trying to get as many matches on the air as possible. With that in mind, Shondell is open to moving match times around as needed to get visibility for the program, conference and sport. With VB being the third most-watched sport on BTN (behind FB and MBB), the audience is there, they just need to get more of the game in front of the people, and with both MBB and WBB going on at probably the same time, if evening slots are taken, Shondell would be fine with playing, say, at 1 and 3:30 instead of 6 and 8:30 if necessary. I’d still expect BTN+ to have to cover many of these, but if COVID has its way, enough matches and games will be canceled that there may well be plenty of space to air every VB match they can.

Plans are currently to restrict in-person viewing to family, which is about the most I’d want in Holloway. I want no part of a closed-air gym with an old HVAC system and plenty of people making noise, even if we’re 6+ feet from each other (which doesn’t leave much room, you’ve seen how small Holloway is). Given how COVID’s progressed and how some fans are behaving (we’re all looking at you, Notre Dame football), the chance of the conference approving in-person fans is pretty much 0.

Lineups

With no non-conference play to test different lineups and get the newcomers ready for top-tier volleyball, this could go in any number of directions. But if everyone’s healthy, I could see them rolling out this way:

• OH Newton, S Bush, OPP Cleveland

• MB Johnson, MB Trammell

• DS Otec, L Hornung

• First subs: DS Schermerhorn, serving specialist Terwilliger

• Front-row subs: OH Ellis, Chinn, Koch in some order, S Renner, MB Brown, Myers

• Back-row subs: DS Torrance, Chacon

If Trammell or one of the others doesn’t earn a starting spot, the other option Shondell mentioned was to swing Cleveland back to MB where she was when she started and have one of the sophs start at OPP. Cleveland’s capable of the move, but it seems to me like the more likely scenario is the first one, especially because it would mean leaving a third-team All-American in her spot and putting a potential high-ceiling freshmen in her natural spot. However, Shondell is the guy who took All-American OH Danielle Cuttino and moved her back to MB to make room for freshman Caitlyn Newton, and that worked out pretty well (Cuttino was an AA again as a middle and Newton, well, you can still see her today, at least once she’s healthy).

We’ll see in January! Probably. At least for a bit. Anyway …

Athletes Unlimited

Val Nichol isn’t just back in the States to coach at Purdue, although she sounds like it really fits her well. She’s also here for the inaugural season of Athletes Unlimited volleyball. AU is the system that had its first softball season this summer - rather than a standard franchise setup run by owners, it’s a single league run by players (with guidance, of course). Instead of pre-selected teams, four players are chosen as captains for the first week, and they draft their own teams. The four teams play a round-robin schedule, with points awarded to each player for in-game achievements (in softball, it was for total bases, walks, steals, caught stealing, outs recorded as a pitcher, and runs given up as a pitcher, plus bonus points for winning an inning, with ties carrying over like in a skins game in golf, and more points for winning the game) and for MVP voting at the end of each game.

At the end of the week, the top four players in the standings are captains, they redraft teams, and the process repeats. At the end of the season, the players receive bonuses in the order of the final standings … and each player also earns money for a charity they select at the beginning of the season. There’s also something which I think is called the Book of Awesome, where they make a show of writing everything notable that happened during the season.

If you’re thinking that this setup is tailor-made for daily fantasy sports, you are correct, and for some reason, I never actually played it, even though it was free on DraftKings. Not sure why. But it was also a lot of fun to watch, and the fact that there was in-game scoring to be had meant that even when a game wasn’t that close, there was still a reason to watch, and if a team was too good in a particular week, they’d almost certainly be broken up the next week, especially if multiple people on the team ended up as captains!

I’m assuming that for volleyball, they’ll give points for the usual stuff: aces, kills, digs, blocks, maybe assists (but not too many since there are a ton of assists). Bonus points for winning a set and the match. Maybe something else? We’ll find out in February, when the season gets underway in Nashville. Since there aren’t any franchises, there’s no need to play in more than one location, which makes it ideal for COVID times - softball had a bubble in suburban Chicago, volleyball will have a bubble in Nashville, and lacrosse will start up in 2021 as well.

You can look at the list of players who’ve committed to 2021 volleyball here; in addition to Val Nichol and Sherridan Atkinson, the two Purdue alumnae on the list, you’ll recognize a number of other familiar names from Big Tenteen and other opponents: Ali Bastianelli, Tiffany Clark, Deja McClendon and Samantha Seliger-Swenson, to name a few. I don’t know the pro scene well enough to judge the quality of the roster, but I suspect it’ll be a welcome sight regardless, and given how competitive NCAA volleyball is, I would expect nothing less from AU.

If this works out - softball went well enough that it’ll be back in 2021 - we can even make a road trip to Nashville in the future! It’s not that far, you know, I remember when we went there for … uh … um, I think it was a sightseeing trip once. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Sightseeing.

Anyway, good luck to Val and Sherridan, we look forward to seeing them in February 2021 in Nashville and to seeing Val on the bench with the Good Gals a bit before that! (I’m assuming she’ll step away from coaching this season, but in the future she could probably coach the regular season and then play in the offseason, which would be AU’s normal season.)

Hey! Did I mention that we’re reusing the feature image kindly provided courtesy of Purdue Sports, and that the pic of Val is also from Purdue Sports? Now I did.