Before the season began, Wichita State volleyball had the Lipscomb LUV Invitational tournament scheduled, but there was one problem: the other teams refused to play against the Shockers.
As a result, volleyball head coach Chris Lamb had to enter into the Kennesaw State Invitational at the last second, where Wichita State played the host twice in the same tournament.
“No one wanted to play us,” Lamb said. “I got booted. That’s why we had to scramble and do some things late, like that Kennesaw Indiana thing. That was very, very late.”
Lamb places heavy emphasis on building a schedule where Wichita State plays some of the top teams in the country — which sometimes comes at the cost of the team’s win-loss record. But he said when other coaches don’t share the same approach to scheduling, it can lead to challenges.
“I look around, and I see people who do the exact opposite, and I’m sure it feels good, but I’m less interested in feel-good and more interested in get-good,” Lamb said.
Math and development
This season, Wichita State has played the 18th most difficult schedule among NCAA teams, including taking on four ranked opponents. Although the Shockers have gone winless against their more difficult challengers and are 3-6 on the season, Lamb said he put the team through that gauntlet for “math” and “development” reasons.
On the math side, it’s an effort to boost the team’s rating percentage index (RPI), a catch-all number that reflects a team’s win-loss record and quality of opponents and is used frequently to decide postseason tournament invitations.
“RPI doesn’t know the difference between good and bad,” Lamb said. “It knows the difference between successful and non-successful.”
Lamb also said he wants to challenge the team to compete against the best players and coaches in the NCAA.
“I want to be able to evaluate them when it’s hard,” he said. “Because if all you’re doing is beating teams, you’ll get real comfortable with what you’re doing … I like (that non-conference) forces us to stay at the drawing board and to keep searching for better ways to do things.”
Lamb said not all coaches see scheduling the same way he does, with some prioritizing the team’s win-loss record over facing the toughest opponents possible.
“I know people that say you need confidence, and they think you can’t do it unless you win,” he said. “I don’t happen to agree. I think you can find things within matches, win or lose, that can allow you to feel confident.”
Lamb said the Lipscomb tournament wasn’t the only example of teams not wanting to play his team. He said Rutgers University and Louisiana Tech University also declined to play the Shockers at the Wooo Pig Invitational because they thought they might lose.
Lamb said the situation was “frustrating.” He described another time when a fellow coach called him and said, “Lambo, I just don’t lose as good as you.”
“Well, then that means your team — because you can’t handle it — your team pays the price,” Lamb said. “When the end of the year comes, your RPI is 160 and mine’s 60.”
Seeds preparing for harvest
One of the risks of taking on difficult teams is winning less games early in the season. Lamb said he hopes fans and players, who want to win every game, stay patient with the process.
“Right now, the seeds are in the ground, and we’re fertilizing, and we’re irrigating, and we’re preparing for harvest, and it’ll come,” he said. “But I don’t know how much fun it is being a seed underground, but eventually, it’ll bloom.”
Redshirt freshman Alyssa Gonzales said Lamb has been telling the team to be “learners, not losers.”
“I think that’s really good for us to take into a loss — let’s learn from what we lost,” Gonzales said. “And let’s learn from our mistakes and what this team did on us.”
Wichita State faced the #5-ranked University of Nebraska-Lincoln this past weekend in front of 8,541 fans, the largest crowd Gonzales had ever played in front of. She said Lamb told the team that they would tell their grandkids about the game.
“I think it was a really great experience for us to be able to go there and perform in front of that many people,” Gonzales said. “And I think we learned a lot about each other as a team, and our strengths, our weaknesses.”
