WKU Volleyball: Lady Tops Open NCAA Tournament Against Notre Dame
It’s the first national postseason game of the athletic year for WKU, as the Lady Toppers open up the Lexington regional against Notre Dame…
It’s the first national postseason game of the athletic year for WKU, as the Lady Toppers open up the Lexington regional against Notre Dame in the NCAA Volleyball Tournament.
Match Info
Time: 4 p.m. CT
Location: Memorial Coliseum | Lexington, Ky.
TV: WatchESPN
Stats: WKUSports.com
Here’s how the Lady Tops and Irish stack up against one another.
Curse you for not having the same format for stats, schools who rarely play one another.
Anyway, this is by far the stiffest competition the Lady Toppers have faced in quite some time — Notre Dame went 22–9 on the year, and 11–8 in conference play. Their lone non-con loss? a 3–0 defeat to the hands of the Ohio State Buckeyes, a squad the Lady Toppers swept early in the season.
The Irish are paced by Jemma Yeadon, who led the team with 442 kills, but wasn’t very accurate, logging a hitting percentage of just .159 and 205 errors (by far the biggest number on the team). For comparison’s sake, the Lady Tops’ leading offensive machine — Alyssa Cavanaugh — recorded 448 kills with a hitting percentage of .358 and recorded 119 errors.
The one thing offensively the Lady Toppers have that ND doesn’t is up-top depth (I’ll explain in a moment): While Yeadon is ND’s only 400+ kill offensewoman, the Lady Toppers have Rachel Anderson to accompany Cavanaugh in the 400 kill club: Anderson had 402 kills (a whooping .425 hitting percentage) and made just 88 errors.
Remember that whole “up-top” depth thing? While ND doesn’t boast multiple 400+ killers, they do share the wealth, as three Irish hitters have more than 250 kills (Rebecca Nunge with 272, Sydney Kuhn with 258 and Sam Fry with 257).
What the Irish seem to “lack” in offense, the make up for at the front of the net with three 100-block defenders in Fry (162), Meg Morningstar (117) and Nunge (103). To counter, the Lady Tops have only 115 blocks from Anderson, who’s the only player averaging over a block per set for WKU.
While I’m aware some of these numbers are either 1.) misleading or 2.) don’t tell the full story, on paper, it seems like a power house offense against a very capable defense, and it should be a lot of fun to watch.
Notre Dame seems to have an incredibly balanced attack and hopefully they aren’t able to take too much advantage of WKU by mixing who is laying the balls down for points.
The Lady Toppers are just 2–10 all time in the NCAA tournament and after the year they’ve had, I really want to see them not just get another tournament win and escape another early exit, but make some sort of run. Although that draw to face potentially the #4 team in the country wasn’t too friendly.
The winner of this one gets the opportunity to play the winner of the ETSU/Kentucky match on Saturday.