mymy32

I do think Elliott changed his approach to littles... at least somewhat. He has said several times that he feels you need 3 good back row defenders to win a championship. He had that in the back to back years, then didn't in 24. He made sure to bring in good little for last year, but then mostly just played Emma and Ramsey. He didn't really play Callie, but she was there and available, and Anya was really only there for her serve. This year they have the new Emma and everyone else back. Which is why I was super surprised when they went with the 6-2 this season and essentially didn't have much use for them. Recently, they've been using all of the littles, and they're actually doing a really good job. At least, they haven't been a liability. But even they can't get under the missles coming from the other team when there's barely any block to slow them down. That overview of setters is something else, man. Someone posted a shorter version of that on another site, and while I had known that Texas wasn't managing the position well, I didn't realize it looked that bad. Something is going wrong there and it needs to get fixed. I don't know why Elliott has managed the position like he has. Is he searching for perfection? Or does he think his hitters are athletic enough that they should be able to do well without perfect sets? It's very confusing. As I said on another board, I think that Elliott might be used to having more talent than 98% of other teams, and just being able to let his attackers take over the match. The problem is that the game has grown so much that the gap between elite pins and great pins is smaller than ever. And the gap between great pins and really good pins is even tinier. Texas can't rely on just having more talent because the talent gap with many teams is now too small. So that leaves development. And while Texas seems to have had great development in the past, I can't say I've seen much in the most recent season and a half. It's worrisome.