In other news.... (a Catch-all Thread - Spoilers)

Thanks for the update. Sorry for both teams, staffs, families.

I find it interesting, (and unfortunate), that some bottom women's volleyball dwellers in the Big 10 aren't better by this time. I remember thinking about 3-4 years ago, that some of the perennial bottom feeders in the Big 10 Women's Volleyball would be good by this time. Maryland would be except that Steve Aires moved to Indiana because of, (to my understanding), lack of support by the administration there. Iowa would be better with Bond Shymansky, except that he ran afoul of the NCAA and the helping out athletes. Northwestern got themselves a good coach, but things don't seem to be going that well.

My understanding of the Iowa situation is that a girl showed up in Iowa, expecting to have a scholarship, and there was nothing there. She needed some money desperately, and Bond, being a compassionate individual helped her out with some rent money. But the NCAA, <sarcasm> in its wisdom <end sarcasm>, doesn't allow any exceptions, and so Bond Shymansky was history. (I'm pretty sure that I have my facts right.) Of course most of us know how well the NCAA handled the Sandusky case. Oh well. (As you can tell, I don't have a high opinion of the NCAA.)

Northwestern, with new coach Shane Davis since the 2016 season, has seemed to have more difficulty recruiting players than one would have anticipated. Last year they were 5-15. While beating OSU, MSU, Maryland, Rutgers and Ill, they were unable to beat any team twice. They are better, but not as much as one would expect. On the other hand, maybe I'm expecting too much.

It's too bad that these teams haven't gotten much better. It would help the whole conference if there weren't bottom feeders that are easy to beat. That being said, Indiana with Steve Aires will, I'm pretty sure get better. Maryland, with Adam Hughes, should do better also.

Not sure about Northwestern. Shane Davis is definitely a good coach, but not sure the transfer to women's volleyball is going well. I'm sure the scholastic standards at Northwestern don't help matters any, as it definitely narrows down the pool of recruits that can/want to come to Northwestern. Tho I'm in the Chicago area, I haven't followed NW Women's Volleyball enough to figure out what their problem is/has been. The prior coach was able to get some good players, but not enough of them to make them a really good team.

Rutgers has improved a bit. But they seem to be the one of the teams that stays consistently in the cellar. They have a new coach, who did well at Northeastern, and have gotten a bunch of foreign players, recruited by the prior coach I believe. My impression is that team moral isn't bad, but they're having growing pains as hardly anybody on the team has played together before.  I think they probably were having trouble recruiting high quality US players. Too soon to see how that situation will turn out. They've beaten Iowa and Indiana so far this year. That seems to be about the same as last year. At least the Big 10 women's volleyball doesn't have a team in the league that anybody can beat. (Sort of like Maryland wrestling. Maryland has gotten shut out by 4 out of 8 teams they've wrestled, and in one of the non-shutouts, they only scored 3 points. I mean, it's hard to be that bad They have very few wrestlers who have even won a match!)

Anyway, here's hoping that these team are able to improve and make the Big 10 a better conference.

P.S.  I'm trying to take over Ethans job. Just kidding. I started writing and just couldn't stop.

Bummer.

Y'all just blew up my weekend.

In other discussions...fmr. Iowa coach Bond was also a screamer. I watched how he communicated w/his team while they were at Rec Hall and I felt very sorry for the players. As to the NCAA infraction, IIRC the player had a scholarship but that didn't cover summer pre-enrollment period and she was homeless. In that case, I would have thought getting the AD and NCAA on the phone to figure something out would have been the above-board route.

At NU, I was surprised that ?the only male B1G coach of color? was fired, went to Samford and IIRC has done well while meanwhile, NU has foundered. There was probably something behind the scenes that Volleytalk or someone else has hinted at, but I didn't get the feeling it was a classy move by NU.

Maybe the way NU handled it wasn't classy, but NU was generally in the bottom third of the league.  From a little that I've read about NU, they have been trying to upgrade their athletic programs.  If this was the case, I don't think Chan deserved to keep his job.  Just my opinion. In sixteen years he had a 228-247 record.  Which, if you factor out the pre-Big 10 season, would mean that he probably won around  1 out of 3 matches in the Big 10.

On the silver lining in the cloud, a "positive" result of the cancellations is that PSU doesn't have to play 5 matches in 8 days.  As a fan I'd like to see them play, but from the coaches/players side of things, that's pretty difficult.  Course, that's the thing with the pandemic, either way you lose.