Thank you for supporting Evollve! If you like our work, consider donating to help us offset our costs and continue to provide the volleyball community with free access to stats and data.
Welcome to the Evollve weekly newsletter, where every Monday we’ll take a look at some of the most impressive feats of the past week in NCAA volleyball. To kick things off, let’s dive into some of the most unlikely results of what was a fantastic opening weekend.
Biggest Upset
Manhattan wasted no time matching its 2024 win total, beating Houston Christian in straight sets after finishing with a 1-28 record a season ago. Our model gave the Jaspers just a 6.1% chance to win.
Biggest Comeback
While Nebraska may have grabbed the headlines, the biggest comeback of the week came courtesy of Denver, who at one point trailed LMU 19-14 in the third set after dropping the first two. At their lowest point, the Pioneers had just a 0.2% chance to win according to our model, but they stormed back to take set three 28-26 and finished off the reverse sweep with thrilling wins in sets four and five.
Best Clutch Performance
In one of the best matches of the weekend, Wright State took down Loyola Chicago after a fifth that almost never ended. Wright State’s Katie Sowko took over down the stretch, recording five kills eventually leading to a 23-21 set win, including keeping her team alive down 15-14 and down 16-15 as well as the tiebreaking putaway at 20-20. Sowko added over a full win worth of win probability in the match.
Evollve Top 25
We’ll wrap things up with our model’s top 25 heading into the new week. Leading the way is Nebraska after an electric comeback win over Kentucky, and the Huskers are followed by Pitt, Creighton, Louisville, and Stanford.
Does the metric weight games played? Seems like Texas should be much higher and Pitt and Creighton lower.