In article <4elnvh$
...@nuhou.aloha.net>, <og
...@aloha.net> writes:
> I would have to say right now that the Player of the Year contest looks
> like a battle between Yuval Katz of UH and Paul Nihipali of UCLA, both of
> whom were incredible Saturday night. For some inexplicable reason
> Nihipali was left off the all-tournament team, and was even pulled from
> the game for a while Scates seems to be down on him, and I'm not sure
> why. He was nearly unstoppable, and is truly the complete package as he
> showed by digging a number of blistering hits. Can anybody enlighten me
> as to the possible reasons for his being in Scate's doghouse?
For the record, this was the announced all-tournament team: Phil
Eatherington, Ball State; Ivan Contreras, Penn State; Jason Ring,
Hawaii; Erik Pichel, Hawaii; Brian Wells, UCLA; Stein Metzger, UCLA;
MVP -- Yuval Katz, Hawaii.
Two of the selections seem a bit off. Though I love setter Erik Pichel's
athleticism (he reminds me of Eric Sato when he's hitting in warmups),
Pichel was benched in the third game against UCLA for Curt Vaughan. I
disagreed when coach Wilton left Pichel on the bench when game 4 started,
but the Rainbows won both game 4 and the exciting game 5 with the purple-
haired Vaughan at setter. Pichel looks to be a quicker and more
accurate with his sets than Vaughan, but Vaughan is about 3 or 4 inches
taller and can handle the high pass with his jump sets.
The other selection that seemed odd was Brian Wells. Wells is, of
course, a good player; but is by no means the go-to guy of the Bruins
(which is Nihipali). Wells had 15 kills in the Hawaii match;
Nihipali had 25 with freshman Fred Robins adding 23. Probably the
reason Wells was voted to the tournament team was that Scates chose
to sit both Nihipali and Robins out in the first match of the
tournament vs. Penn State. I'm not sure if it was because he had
disciplinary problems with these players, or that he just wanted to
give some extra playing time to the rest of his talented roster.
As an aside, I noticed that a player named Vallely often subbed in
to serve for the Bruins. Is this, by any chance, the son of John
Vallely, the former UCLA basketball player?
