The 2018 NCAA Volleyball season kicks off this week around the country and this Friday in Seattle, as the Huskies open their campaign with two straight matches against 14th-ranked San Diego. Single-game tickets are available for purchase now. GoHuskies.com will take a look at the four positions leading up to the season opener, starting with the middle blockers.
SEATTLE – Many unknowns face the Huskies this season, but one position where a track record has been firmly established is at middle blocker. Junior Avie Niece and sophomore Lauren Sanders have both started more than thirty matches in their young careers and have established solid baselines that they each hope to go well beyond this season.
Adding to the mix, 6-foor-4 and quick, freshman Marin Grote was one of the top recruits in the country and has impressed Head Coach Keegan Cook in the early going. Put together, the three middles will look to keep Washington up with the most proficient blocking squads in the country, while striving to become an equally dangerous offensive threat.
Last season the Huskies ranked seventh in the NCAA in blocks per set with 2.98, in large part due to Sanders, who as a freshman was 16th nationally and second in the Pac-12 with 1.45 per set. Niece averaged 1.13 blocks per set as a freshman when she started 23 matches and had 1.02 per set as a sophomore but those numbers were impacted by a more situational role.
The two bring a combined 332 blocks into the year, and have affected many an opposing offense. The challenge now will be doing it every time they take the court.
"Avie and Lauren are both on the verge of being players who can affect the game on both sides of the ball night in and night out," says Cook. "I think they've each had nights where they were good either on offense or defense, but to string it together night after night is when you know you're starting to have a pretty good identity."
Niece was a starter for most of her freshman season, helping UW win the 2016 Pac-12 title and reach the Elite Eight. The addition last year of Sanders, Marion Hazelwood, and Crissy Jones also playing in the middle resulted in a slightly reduced role for Niece but she was often more effective, upping her kills per set from 0.99 as a freshman to 1.32 last year.
Cook has also seen Niece do everything required to take her game to a new level. "Avie's growth in the last six months has been really outstanding," he says.
"It started in the weight room just seeing how much strength she's added to both her vertical jump and her arm speed, there's a lot of work that goes into that. But her approach has really gotten dialed in. Her process for practice, and for academics and all the things it takes to be a great student-athlete, she's got things going. And she is now in a position where she's able to teach some teammates both in her position and outside of her position the kind of work it takes to be successful."
Niece has made a name for herself blocking so far but can put the ball away with authority and late last year showed a developing knack for making things work even when the offensive timing wasn't perfect. She finished both 2016 and 2017 hitting an identical .252, but that hides a strong finish from last year. In November and December, when matches mattered most, Niece hit a team-high .364 and averaged 1.70 kills per set.
Says Cook, "The area she and I are most passionate to see her improve is offensively, being able to hit for a high efficiency both in front and behind the setter. Those are major projects. Defensively I think we know what she can do. These last two years the emphasis is more on what can she do offensively." Lauren Sanders playing for the Collegiate National Team in Detroit this summer.
Sanders had an impressive first year, earning Pac-12 All-Freshman Team status and she was an All-American honorable mention in Volleyball Magazine. But Sanders' motor didn't stop in the offseason as she looks to get better. She followed up a UW sponsored trip to Peru to build sport courts for a small village with a stint in Ann Arbor and Detroit, Michigan as part of the U.S. Collegiate National Team, "playing high level volleyball at a time when most people are vacationing," says Cook.
"I was of course pleased with the way she performed last year but I think she's got some room to grow," Cook says of Sanders. "When I think about growth for her I'd love to see confidence and being asserting and knowing that she's good at what she does. She has big aspirations. She's not shy talking about her aspirations to be on the national team, so I'd like to see her be more assertive and have confidence in all these things she can do on the court for sure."
Although her blocking numbers ranked her among the nation's best, Cook thinks there is still a lot more to come on that side of the ball.
"Lauren did have quite a good year blocking, and she still has a ways to go in terms of her eyework and in terms of the number of different types of movements she can make. I don't think she's anywhere near her ceiling as a blocker.
And like Niece, becoming a more consistent offensive threat would be a huge boost for a Husky squad that lost so much experience at the pins from last year.
"Offensively she already looks better than she did last year," says Cook. "Last year was a long season playing every match as a true freshman and I think she's better physically now, she's way more experienced."
Grote, from Burbank, Calif., has upped the wattage on the brightness for UW's future at the position in her first couple weeks in the gym.
Cook is still learning about all the freshmen, but says he has been impressed with Grote's "ability to make changes, her ability to learn. She's at a really good starting point in terms of her eyework as a blocker and her effort in transition. So she's got a good set of fundamentals on both sides of the ball. She can attack in front or behind the setter. The challenge is can you play with the physicality of some of these other players? Can you do it night-in, night-out? But certainly she is a player that's going to contribute for us for years to come."
