Our recollection of Bailey in 2012 tends to be distorted because of her otherworldly performance starting with the five game loss in Ames. Prior to that match Bailey had a career high of 17 kills in a single match. During that 11/24 match she pounded out 28 kills (an astonishing 165% of her previous best) and from then on all the cliched sports superlatives apply: beast mode, set the world on fire, carried the team on her back, and so on. Even keeping that thought in mind it has been hard for me watching the matches and glancing at occasional box scores not to wonder if something is wrong with Bailey. So I ran some numbers to compare 2012 from the start of the season through 11/2 (a Friday match last year conveniently on the same month / day as the most recent match this year). Here is what I got: [pre] Year SP K E TA PCT BS BA BE 2012: 76 274 67 656 .316 17 42 5 2013: 72 244 67 609 .291 05 34 4 [/pre]Kills per game works out to 3.6 in 2012 and 3.39 in 2013, while total blocks work out to 38 in 2012 and 22 in 2013. So what I see in the numbers is a fairly small dropoff in offensive production, but a dramatic decline in blocking. Random variation, overall quality of the opposition, and increased focus from opponents' defenses in response to the notoriety achieved in last year's playoffs, as well as playing with two different setters this year, could all be factors in what amounts to a roughly 8 percent drop in hitting efficiency and a roughly 6% drop in KPG. This is not to meant as proof we can rule out health issues, or anything else really. Grad school is dramatically more demanding than college, for example, so who knows how that might affect her play? I just wanted an objective look versus a subjective disappointment based too much on last year's late season explosion. One thing I've wondered about: although I've seen her don the goggles in prior years, this year she seems to wear them almost all the time. Anybody have any info about that? For comparison purposes, H.Eck's KPG has fallen roughly 20% (from 4.64 to 3.70) and her hitting percentage has fallen about the same 20% (from .295 to .236), when looking at the same time frame, while her total blocks have dropped from 20 to 16.5. So Bailey has held up remarkably well offensively, while H.Eck has done a better job of keeping up her defensive numbers. Given that comparison, I'm thinking that if we still had Sha' playing six rotations and passing to one setter, Bailey could be having a NPoY-caliber season.
