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Madi Skinner

Rickylovesweed

By Rickylovesweed
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LTtxfan

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AUSTIN, Texas – No. 1 Texas Volleyball's Madisen Skinner was named the VolleyballMag.com National Player of the Year, marking the third-consecutive season for a Longhorn to win the award.

Skinner was joined by Asjia O'Neal on the publication's All-America First Team after the pair helped lead Texas to the 2023 National Championship.

Jerritt Elliott was also named the VolleyballMag.com National Coach of the Year.

In six NCAA matches, Skinner totaled 125 kills (20.8/match). In the national semifinals against Wisconsin, she had 18 kills, an assist, six aces and nine digs. Then in the championship-match sweep of Nebraska, Skinner had 16 more kills, two aces, five digs and a solo block. For the season, she had a Big 12-leading 547 kills — 203 more than she had in 2022 — averaging 4.8/set and added 46 aces. She also averaged 1.96 digs/set.

VolleyballMag.com voters were instructed to list four teams and each had to include at least one setter and one libero. The publication is also not beholden to the restrictions and nominating process that the AVCA adheres to and they also wait until after the NCAA semifinals and final to conclude voting. 

 

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TonyTexas

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23 minutes ago, Rickylovesweed said:

I don't understand why some services vote for NPOY before the NCAA tournament is over. 

You could not possibly watch the NCAA tournament this year and say "there's a better player than Skinner." 

 Voting for individual awards for almost all sports are done prior to tournaments and playoffs. There is typically a separate award for postseason MVP

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Js1

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3 hours ago, Rickylovesweed said:

Yeah and that's dumb. 

Individual awards should be inclusive of what you do in the postseason. The most important time for individual performance. 

Yeah, the biggest games and the best competition are in the postseason. And it’s not a 1-2 game statistic like CFB for the post-Heisman ceremony. What Madi did for 6 games in December was legit.

Look at what she did against the top 3 teams in the country. 

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Rickylovesweed

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13 hours ago, SL Xpress said:

She's better than Logan Eggleston.

I did not have that on my bingo card. 

It also puts into perspective how insane the team was 2 years ago. Eggleston, Skinner, and Fleck on the same team. No wonder they only lost 1 match and weren't even challenged in the NCAA tournament. 

In terms of volleyball rosters, there can't be many better than the Longhorns roster from 2 years ago. 

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SL Xpress

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8 hours ago, Rickylovesweed said:

It also puts into perspective how insane the team was 2 years ago. Eggleston, Skinner, and Fleck on the same team. No wonder they only lost 1 match and weren't even challenged in the NCAA tournament. 

In terms of volleyball rosters, there can't be many better than the Longhorns roster from 2 years ago. 

Caffey was an All American for Nebraska. Bergmark was one of the best middle blockers in the Pac 12. Deandre Pierce was a starter for a very good Georgia Tech team the next year. Parra practically won Big 12 player of the year with TCU. Ewert is playing better as a professional than SKT, who was rated as the best setter in the country by some sources her last year at Utah, and in my opinion was severely underrated as a setter at Texas. 

O'Neal was the best player in the country not named Skinner this past year, with arguably the most historic serving run in volleyball championship history - as a middle blocker! She's the school record holder in blocks and one of the best slide attackers in college volleyball ever.

Halter is going to go down as a legend, IMO, and that year was her true freshman season. Akana was a celebrated server/DS for Nebraska who took over the same role at Texas, going on fire from the service line in the tournament including the match point ace versus Louisville. 

Kahahawai has been a national team member for u19 and u21 for years, winning a gold medal as a starter last summer. Molly Phillips is another all American who during her career won two national championships and made another final as a starter. 

The roster was unbelievable in 2022. I never thought we'd see the like again.

But who knows? Maybe 2024 we have something similar. Lauenstein, Rutherford, and Carlson are unbelievable roster additions. If Kahahawai decides to stay and keeps improving, and we see something from Helmers, Bunton, Singletary, Ames, and Byrd, this roster is going to be crazy from top to bottom. Their toughest opponent will be the 2nd team, just like it was in 2022. 

But getting back to Skinner, it's one thing to go from a relatively underrecruited talent to an All American. That's not what she did. I'm just saying that happens pretty regularly. That's very impressive for sure. It's an entirely different dynamic to go from an All American, to head and shoulders the best player in the country.

Everyone notices her crazy elevation at the pin and basically her being indefensible from the back row. But her defense has improved so much this year. And that serve! Honestly, I think her serve might be better than Eggleston's. Because of O'Neal versus Nebraska, we tend to forget a little bit about Skinner's run against the Badgers! She just keeps improving every match, every week, so so much. The amount of time she has to be putting into her game must be insane. I know she's still not the best passer in the NCAA. Elliott even took her out of serve receive completely a few times this year when she was getting picked on. Just stood Halter right next to her and basically had her lined up practically at the sideline of the court. But I bet she's good next year. She just works so hard. I don't remember her being a weakness in the final four, that's for sure. Especially compared to her counterparts Franklin and Murray. But defensively she's really good! She saves a lot of hard hit shots, never gives up, and plenty of her digs put us in a great place in transition. She's an asset back there outside of serve receive. 

I can't wait to see what she does in 2024. To me having her come back is just as unfair to the rest of volleyball as having O'Neal return this year was. She's a cheat mode, for sure. 

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SL Xpress

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10 hours ago, Rickylovesweed said:

We needed a loaded team like that in 2022 to get over the hump. 

After being so close for a decade, you could just feel the pressure whenever we made the final 4. Getting that monkey off our back was big.  Especially for Elliott. 

Forget Elliott. It was big for me!

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