Let’s broaden our Horizons…
And see if we can’t knock down another conference on our journey through all 32 before the season starts. But before we march forward, we must first look back on where we’ve been. You know what that means — the rundown.
America East Conference
Southwestern Athletic Conference
Patriot League
Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference
Big Sky Conference
Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference
Northeast Conference
Big South Conference
Colonial Athletic Association
Ohio Valley Conference
Horizon League
Western Athletic Conference
Southland Conference
Conference USA
The Summit League
Atlantic Sun Conference
American Athletic Conference
Ivy League
Southern Conference
Mid-American Conference
Sun Belt Conference
Atlantic 10 Conference
Big West Conference
Mountain West Conference
Big East Conference
Missouri Valley Conference
Atlantic Coast Conference
Southeastern Conference
Big 12 Conference
West Coast Conference
Big Ten Conference
Pac-12 Conference
This one should be easier to get through than the last, as the Horizon League consists of a comparatively scant 9 schools, only 8 of whom sponsor volleyball (the non-volleyball playing member is the University of Detroit). The Horizon League dates back only to 1979, putting it on the younger side of the continuum of how old each league is. The conference formed with six member institutions, but after the departures of Butler for the Atlantic 10 last year and Loyola for the Missouri Valley this year, none of the original six are still in the conference.
The league was originally known as the Midwestern Collegiate Conference, but after years of obscurity with the Mid-Continent Conference sharing the initialism, they adopted the current name of Horizon League. That was in 2001. Ironically, the Mid-Continent also changed their name six years later (they’re now The Summit League, who we’ll visit in a little while), and no conference is currently known as the MCC, not at any NCAA level. The obfuscation between the two leagues probably stemmed from the fact that schools have commonly left one for the other — indeed, of the 9 current full members, only the aforementioned Detroit Titans are not former full members of the Mid-Continent/Horizon League. That includes the new team in the league, Oakland, who directly replaced Loyola, who went to the Missouri Valley to replace Creighton…..and they say coaching is a carousel? Geeze.
Here were the season-end volleyball standings in the Horizon League last year:
1. Cleveland State 13-1 (23-7)
2. Valparaiso 10-4 (20-12)
3. UIC 10-4 (19-13)
4. Loyola 8-6 (17-12)
5. Green Bay 6-8 (15-14)
6. Youngstown State 5-9 (15-14)
7. Milwaukee 4-10 (9-19)
8. Wright State 0-14 (2-30)
For their success in the quickie four-team Horizon League tournament, Cleveland State’s date with destiny took the shape of the 11th seeded Kansas Jayhawks. You can tell we’re marching towards relevancy, as the linescores of these tournament matches become less and less lopsided. Kansas of course won, but CSU did take a set from them, with (17-25, 25-10, 25-16, 25-18) the final.
I hope the Vikings enjoyed their time on the dance floor last season, because they’ve got an uphill climb to make it back. They weren’t exactly gutted by graduations from last year to this, more of a surgical strike, but what a surgical strike it indeed was. Of the four graduating seniors, three were team leaders. The foremost among them was definitely Kara Koch, the Horizon League’s Player of the Year last year racking up an even 500 kills on a perfectly solid .249 efficiency. Leading blocker (and most efficient scorer) Marie Frease is also gone, as is regular libero Amanda Medvetz, and all of them were all-conference last season. The other graduating senior was defensive specialist Brittany Holland, third-highest dig earner on the team last year (the second was actually Koch).
So those are some big pairs of shoes to fill. The mantle of leading blocker certainly falls to Maggie Hannon, who was number-two in that area last year, but that, again, calls into question who fills her role as MB2. Right now, it’s just about impossible to say. The other middles on the roster are mostly freshmen, either true or redshirt. There is one sophomore, Kelly Kiger, but she hardly played a year ago. It remains to be seen whether she has the inside track over freshmen Aaliyah Slappy, Marche Johnson, Katie Nesbitt, or Sydney Mast. All but Slappy are also listed at one or both pins, giving some options to bolster the ranks with returning senior Kerry Winchester at the outside hitter position. But it’s all pretty uncertain, at least from an outside prespective (I’d hope they at least have an idea of whom they’ll trot out).
The one spot where the team have returners back is at setter. The Vikings gave time to two last year. Dayna Roberts started all 30 of the team’s matches and made the Horizon League all-newcomer team, but she definitely shared the role with Annie Djukic, who returns as a senior. Djukic made 13 starts herself last year and appeared in some capacity in all but one of the team’s matches, making it a pretty robust 6-2. There’s no reason to think it won’t be so again.
Reigning Horizon League Coach of the Year Chuck Voss leads Cleveland State as they take their first steps this season the same day as most teams, 30 August, at an invitational hosted by Canisius. The second match of that invitational includes their most noteworthy non-conference foe, North Carolina State. Later on, they also play teams from the ACC and the American.
Valparaiso, the only private school in the conference, have had one of the most quietly successful volleyball programs in the NCAA. They’ve won 20 matches a year every year since 2002 — only ten other schools can say the same. Obviously, they don’t have the most elite strength of schedule year-in, year-out, so it’s not at all to say that they’re better than teams who may have “only” won 16 or 17 some year, but there’s something to be said for accomplishing the task set in front of you. And Valpo have done pretty well at that, though they haven’t been to the NCAA tournament since 2005, a pattern they obviously would like to break.
The Crusaders also lose four players, three to graduation and one to transfer. Important returners do remain, including two of the team’s three 2012 all-conference players (there is only just the one all-conference team). Middle blocker Ellen Vanden Berg was among the conference leaders in blocks, notching over one per set, and she returns for her senior season. Also back is her partner-in-crime up the middle Morgan Beil, who will be a junior in 2013. Valparaiso’s weaknesses last year were on the pins, as Vanden Berg and Beil also led the team in scoring output as well as blocking. Back a year older and, hopefully for the Crusaders, better, are senior outside hitters Kelsey Victor and Sarah Dooms. They’ll have to ratchet up their output from last year in order to make Valpo a top contending team this year.
Head coach Carin Avery has brought in a big incoming class, numbering seven. A few of them will probably redshirt, though there’s no especially noticeable redundancy in position anywhere on the roster. The Crusaders open 2013 at an invitational hosted by Central Florida. Later, at their home invitational, they’ll face the Big Ten’s Iowa, and another Big Ten team Ohio State at still another invitational.
The Flames of Illinois-Chicago (generally known by their acronym UIC) lost five seniors to graduation from last season to this. The least any of them played was 95 of the team’s 123 sets, so the Flames may well be hurting for a little veteran leadership this season. And scoring — the top two scorers each in efficiency (middle hitters Nicole Allgood and Janise Dismuke) and output (pin hitters Aubrey Sniegowski and Kelsey Safranek) have all left. So this is another team with some big shoes to fill.
Setter MaryKate Imrie is surely the team’s foremost returner, having been on the all-conference roster in 2012. She was the only setter in the league to top 11 assists per set last year, an impressive figure indeed. Three other players saw action in all the team’s matches, libero Maggie Strus (a very tall girl to be playing back-row, at just under 6 feet in height), DS Justine Garcia (5-foot-5), and middle hitter Sara Sternard. So defence looks solid, but backbone offence is a real question. Someone will step up and post two and a half kills per set….probably. There’s certainly size on this roster, with five players measuring 6 feet or taller, and Molly McCoy returns for her junior season this year after filling a support role last season, but it, again, looks kind of uncertain.
There’s no conspicuous announcement about recruits, but four true freshmen are listed on the team’s roster page. I don’t imagine more than maybe one of them will redshirt — there just aren’t enough bodies (12 in total). UIC begin their season at an invitational hosted by the United States Naval Academy. Their only big-conference opponent is Iowa, at the Hawkeye Invitational.
We skip over the defected Loyola Ramblers to reach the Green Bay Phoenix (sounds like an NFL matchup). The University of Wisconsin at Green Bay was previously branded for athletic purposes as UW-Green Bay, but as the snazzy logo above indicates, it’s just “Green Bay” now. The Phoenix have changed head coaches since last season, as prior coach Debbie Kirch stepped down to become an assistant athletic director. Her replacement is former Marquette assistant coach Michaela Franklin, who didn’t need long to hire on her first assistant coach and bring in a three-player incoming class, two transfers and one new freshman.
This year’s a bit of a peak for Green Bay. Certainly, they’re the team least-effected by offseason roster changes so far (ironically enough). The team had three seniors last year, only two of whom were regular contributors (though both were all-conference), and only one player left in transfer. Usually a coaching change prompts a little more roster flux than that. Every team won’t be Winthrop, who only retained one player after their change at the top, but this is a surprising amount of stability for the Phoenix. Perhaps because Kirch isn’t exactly gone per se — she’s still working for the university and probably remains at least peripherally involved with the team.
Key returners for the Phoenix include outside hitter Monica Anderson, back as a senior after being the team’s second-leading scorer as a junior. She’ll have to be the top option this year, from the look of things. Setter Leah Poel is also back as a senior, having topped the traditional statistical threshold for setters of 10 assists per set in her junior campaign. One of the team’s graduated seniors from last year was conference digs leader Brittany Groth, who topped 6 digs per set, a pretty massive total. You can just throw somebody in the off-colour jersey and reasonably expect to get 3-4 digs per set out of her (presuming basic competence), but those 2-3 extra digs per set are gonna be a substantial loss unless the time can find defensive production elsewhere. Ohio State transfer Jillian Bauer probably gets the job (else, why would she have transferred?), but it could also be senior holdover Sabrina Maronowski, who got solid playing time as a DS last year. Blocking should be well handled by another senior holdover, Katie Mroczenski, who I suppose I probably should have mentioned earlier in this section being that she was equal-best in blocks in the conference last year.
The team will have five seniors this year and all will probably feature substantially in the master plan. The Phoenix have not announced their 2013 schedule (and it’s getting a little late on to be saying that).
Youngstown State were the most improved team in the Horizon League last year. They went just 5-24 in 2011, and improved by ten whole matches last season before falling to Valpo in the Horizon League tournament. And of anyone in the Horizon League, it’s the Penguins who return the top unit. Just one senior departed to graduation after last year, a part-timer who played in only 12 of the team’s 29 matches. Everyone else is back. Outside hitter Missy Hundelt was the Penguins’ lone all-conference player last year, as she racked up 3.4 kills per set, fourth in the league, on a solid .244 attack efficiency. Improving upon those figures will make for a very very impressive season indeed.
Both setters from Youngstown’s 6-2 come back this year, senior-to-be Casey D’Ambrose (the only player to see action in every set and match in 2012) and sophomore-to-be Erin Muir (who played all but one match). Middle blocker Jenna Cavanaugh, also a senior in 2013, returns averaging a block and a quarter per set last year, and a kill and two-thirds. She’ll be ably assisted up the middle by junior Shannon Watson, who was a little more prolific on the attack and a little less so on the block, to complement Cavanaugh solidly. Defence might be a slight issue, as returning libero Erika West averaged a not-exactly-impressive 3.7 digs per set. She’ll have to improve upon that, or else cede the job to Sam Diebold or Nikki Thompson. But that’s about the only issue I see with the team. Very easy to get excited about this unit.
The Penguins open their season at an invitational hosted by Coastal Carolina. They’ll play Iowa there (everybody from this league playing Iowa?) and later they meet NCAA tournament team Arizona State, as their most prominent non-conference foe.
Just like their Wisconsin counterparts, this school is also now known strictly by its city. This is a team that’s got a few pieces in place. They lost only two players from last season to this, and spread the playing time around quite widely (only two players failed to see the floor in at least half of the team’s sets) that any departures shouldn’t send shockwaves. And despite a decidedly mediocre campaign in terms of wins and losses in 2012, the Panthers did have one big standout player, who returns. Middle blocker Rachel Neuberger returns for her senior season, having been all-conference by virtue of finishing top-ten in the league in blocks per set, attacking efficiency, and kills per set. You don’t often see that combination. She’s got Player of the Year potential this year, providing she stays healthy. And it wouldn’t hurt if Milwaukee could string together some big wins, either.
Other returners include Julie Kolinske, a solid two-way player at the outside hitter position who averaged close to 4 kills and over 3 digs per set last year, defensive specialist Maisey Mulvey, who will probably don the off-colour shirt as the regular libero this year (two and a half digs per set last year providing backup for the now-graduated Anna Bartz), and the team’s two setters Hannah Blanchard and Kayla Price. It does not appear that Milwaukee ran anything like a 6-2 last season, as Blanchard’s and Price’s playing time together would add up to only slightly more than one full season. That looks more like a persistent 5-1, and they simply changed up whom would set when. I know teams will often do this at the setter position, give the younger player more court time in the early season invitationals than an entrenched veteran, but the two are only a year apart in age and experience and the playing time only favoured Blanchard about 60/40. Could be interesting to see what mix the team go with at setter this year.
EDIT – The good folks at VolleyTalk infom me that Price was meant to be the setter all season and missed time hurt, and that Blanchard was pressed into setting out of necessity rather than strategy. I’m not sure why that possibility didn’t occur to me as I was writing this (I would have looked it up, but information on injuries is oddly difficult to find). But, there you go. It wasn’t just some curiosity that had them splitting time.
Milwaukee have the hardest non-conference schedule of anyone in the Horizon League, facing four NCAA tournament teams — Oklahoma, Kansas, Florida, and Marquette. The Panthers’ season starts against the Sooners, at an invitational hosted by Central Michigan. One further thing about this team in 2013 that I found interesting is head coach Susie Johnson‘s incoming class. She signed two recruits last fall, and then got two walk-ons in the spring. You don’t hear a whole bunch about walk-ons in volleyball (or at least, I don’t), so we’ll see if those two plucky young ladies crack the rotation at some point this season.
The Wright State Raiders (with their dog mascot….who knows?) weren’t very successful last year. And they weren’t very young, either, so there may not be cause to be too bullish this season. Four graduating seniors and a lost transfer from the school’s 2012 team all got solid playing time and will constitute pretty major losses for a team that didn’t have much to hang their hats on. They get some help with the incoming transfer of erstwhile Niagara opposite hitter Ellen Senf, who should provide a dandy 1-2 punch with returning outside hitter Heidi Splinter. Middle blocker Marisa Aiello returns having been named to the conference all-newcomer team last year, as she played every match and set as a freshman. Her blocking output was nothing all too impressive, but experience has an undeniable tendency to pay dividends, and she’ll enter this season having as much as any second-year player can.
The Raiders’ roster will be larger this year than last, as head coach Susan Clements‘ five-player recruit class gives them 12 players this year (only 10 last year). More bodies never hurts. The Raiders don’t have an especially eyebrow-raising non-conference schedule, not until the final weekend before Horizon League play starts at least. That’s when they’ll play an invitational also involving NCAA tournament teams Western Kentucky and Dayton. Prior to that, though, not much to point out at all (the Big East’s Butler?).
The new kids on the Horizon League block are the Oakland Golden Grizzlies, out of Auburn Hills, Michigan (Oakland is the name of the county). Oakland are a team who held their own in The Summit League (soon to be profiled), finishing fourth with an 9-7 conference record (16-13 overall). They came agonisingly close to making the NCAA tournament. Facing IPFW in the Summit League tournament final, the Golden Grizzlies won the first two sets before dropping the next three. That’s the sort of loss that stays with you, that stings until you find a win just as powerful to serve as a balm.
The Golden Grizzlies have a little rebuilding to do, though. Gone to graduation are Meghan Bray and Brittany Holbrook, the team’s top scorer and blocker respectively (Bray having been all-Summit League, as she also averaged over 3 digs per set). Junior outside hitter Taylor Humm probably will pick up some of the slack left by Bray, as she too is a good two-way player, though as I’ve said before this is only part of the equation — someone has to take over Humm’s role if she’s taking over Bray’s. Middle blocker Amanda Baker returns having had a prolific freshman season in 2012, and she’s far from the only sophomore on the roster. Seven players could potentially stay together as a unit for the next three seasons for the Golden Grizzlies (though inevitably, someone always transfers, or simply quits). In among that enumeration of sophomores is setter Ciara Schultz, who shared the duties last year with senior-to-be Alissa Valentine, Schultz playing in 28 of the team’s 29 matches and Valentine all of them.
Ultimately, Oakland look pretty similar to most of the teams in the Horizon League for 2012, with a few good returners and several question marks. They’ve got a very large incoming class, 7 total players (two links there) to get the roster up to 17. There’ll be some redshirts there, certainly. They start their season with a home invitational, and have a pretty difficult non-conference schedule, facing teams from the Pac-12, ACC (two), Big East, American, and SEC.
The verdict
The meek shall inherit the earth. The teams with the most solid core returning are teams who were down the food chain in 2012. I think that’s gonna make for a bit of a down year for the conference as a whole. At-large will never even be considered with this league this year (it really wasn’t last year, either), and the eventual champion probably will play a single-digit seed in the NCAA tournament.
TNS SWAG
1. Youngstown State
2. Green Bay
3. Milwaukee
4. Valparaiso
5. Cleveland State
6. Oakland
7. UIC
8. Wright State
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