News About Other B1G Teams and Their Players

That's like my dad; he was in the navy so his favorite teams were Navy and whoever was playing Notre Dame (he had this great dislike of them).  I always thought that was kinda funny.  I'm that way in football; I'm a Bears fan and a fan of whoever is playing New England. 

Yeah, I'm probably in the same camp.  I think I barely want TX to lose more.  

I was just wondering about NIL and volleyball.  There have been some 'rumors' floating around abut Iowa and their poaching wrestlers from other schools where said wrestlers aren't in the portal.  So, it makes me wonder about the NIL situation at TX, NEB and WISC (I don't think PSU is doing this)?  Are some of these transfers getting large amounts of money from NIL at the school they are transferring to that they wouldn't have gotten from their original school? 

It seems like KY is a minor league for TX in volleyball, along with  MINN being a minor league for WISC and NEB.  We (KY & MINN) develop them, you get to use the final product.  Course it does make one wonder why so many really good volleyball players are transferring from KY to wherever.

The way NIL is so unenforced, it has the possibility to wreck a lot of things.  It seems that money can be offered athletes without much advertising/anything being done by the athlete.  So it could be a straight up buy an athlete for a year (or more).  I  can see the point of NIL.  BUT, it sure has the potential to be abused.  

Anyway, enough of this rant.  

Edit.  This may seem a bit hypocritical of me, being a PSU fan and PSU getting a fair number of transfers.  BUT, if you look at Caroline Jurevicius and Maggie Mendelson and their transfer to PSU:  it was because of OTHER transfers to NEB or new recruits so that these two didn't appear that they would be getting any playing time.  It's sort of like wrestlers transferring from PSU to other teams because PSU is so loaded in talent, (which they are), that some REALLY good wrestlers would hardly see the mat cause they had a great/national champion wrestler in front of them.

- MINN out hit TX .211 to .175

MINN is not gonna be the weak sister that I was expecting.  (I don't follow MINN closely, so very possible that MINN fans were expecting a resurgence that I didn't see coming.  Shaftmaster is healthy, no more leg brace.   MINN seems to not miss Taylor Ladnfair at all (at least so far).  I do know that Landfair was unhappy at MINN (my understanding is that Keegan Cook wanted her to play around and she didn't want to), again, I don't have inside info so I DO NOT know why Landfair wanted to transfer  I do not know whether Landfair was disruptive to the team or not.  If she was, her move to NEB might have been addition by subtraction, I don't know.  Julia Hanson, who only had 198 total attempts last year, was MINN's goto girl.  She hit 19 - 5 - 61  .230.  She stepped right in for Landfair and didn't miss a beat.  She was who MINN was going to down the stretch.  

It was a fun match to watch.  A lot of block touches, really good defense, as you can tell by the low hitting percentage.  (I REALLY didn't miss the obnoxious TX crowd.  IMHO the TX crowd is a bunch of unknowledgeable fans who are there to cheer because TX is winning something, not because they like volleyball.  Not like NEB, MINN, WISC fans.  No prejudice here )

MINN was close in the 1st set, then won the 2nd and 3rd set, was blown out in the 4th set and then blew out TX in the 5th.  MINN had come up sort against Stanford on Sunday, (it was MINN's first match of the season), so it was good for them to come out in the fifth against TX and prevail.

A couple of interesting notes:

-  MINN STILL isn't setting their middles much; only 23 attempts for their middles and and 141 attempts for their pins.  Course, part of that was the serving by TX and also the TX block;  a lot of oos hits by both teams

-  The name Samantha Sliger-Swenson (SSS), a stellar MINN setter back in the day,  is familiar to a lot of fans who have watched MINN over the years.  She has two sisters on the team this year; Stella, a 6'1" freshamn setter and Olivia, a 6'3" pin.  Be interesting to see how they do in the future.  There is also another sister Ava playing volleyball as a junior in HS, who seems to be pointed toward MINN also.

So the end result of the Intersport Volleyball Showcase was:

Stanford 2-0

Minn  1-1

Texas 1-1

Wisc 0-2

Again, (I seem to be saying this a lot ), not what I was expecting.  (Maybe this word doesn't mean what I think it means).

So Wisc starts out 0-3 for the season.  They can kiss goodbye the 3rd ranking in the polls.