Draft Prospect Profile: MB Manuela Bibinbe

The Baylor middle blocker is a force to be reckoned with on offense, and it could carry her into the Federation if she's able to become a more consistent defender.

Image courtesy of Baylor Athletics

On Thursday, March 22, I had the opportunity to talk to Baylor middle blocker Manuela Bibinbe — Manu, as they call her — and about nine and a half minutes into our conversation, my mind went totally blank. I had watched film and thoroughly prepared for the interview, but still, I was drawing a blank on what to say next.

After three seconds of dead space that felt like three years, Manu apologetically suggested that I was dissatisfied with her previous answer and was clearly trying to assemble a new one in her brain when I explained the embarrassing truth. She laughed out loud, and it felt like camaraderie, not ridicule. When she speaks, it always feels like you’re being let in on a little something. After years of being fed canned lines by PR-trained baseball players, I couldn’t help but be won over her authenticity pretty much immediately. Good vibes just radiate from Bibinbe.

The reason I arranged the interview in the first place was because Bibinbe caught my attention as a potential 2025 PVF draft prospect. She agreed that if a future in the Federation is possible, it’s an opportunity she’d gladly embrace.

“I would love to play, maybe, for 20, 25 years because of the joy it brings me on a daily basis,” she said. “That has always been my dream – get my degree and then be a professional player.”

It's a future Baylor assistant coach Joshua Walker can see for her as well, and he said so in no uncertain terms. “As long as she wants to play she’s gonna be one of those players that’s gonna be able to stick around,” said Walker.

Bibinbe made her presence known in the Big 12 in 2023, but she took a circuitous route to get there. As a native of the capital city of Cameroon, she was a member of the national team at 17 years old and began her college career at Missouri State West Plains, a junior college. She proved to be too much of a player for that low level of competition and had an immediate impact as a freshman during the 2021 season.

She was listed as both a middle blocker and an opposite hitter on the MSWP website. It’s a tribute to the fact that Bibinbe can make a meaningful impact on the offensive side of the ball, and make no mistake, she has the talent to play at the highest level of college volleyball.

Bibinbe is 6’3” tall and more thickly built than most players on the court, and accordingly, she’s a powerful attacker when the ball comes her way. She can unleash a massive hitting stroke to target the cross-court pocket or force an opponent to make an uncomfortable pass on the reception. Baylor isn't shy about getting her the ball often to take advantage of her offensive capabilities. Coach Walker elaborated on how they utilize her, saying:

“She can withstand a lot of work throughout a game. That’s how you take advantage of someone like her in the middle, giving her as many opportunities to attack as possible. So, when she’s front row, we wanna set her all the time. If she’s front row, she’s typically next to a setter for at least two of the rotations. If we’re running a 5-1, in which the setter is front row, she is blocking with the setter. That means there’s no right side attacker when she’s in a lot. So she has to be able to attack in front of the setter, she has the ability to attack behind the setter as well.”

It’s something of a hybrid role that she serves on offense, but Bibinbe is confident in her ability to impact the game in any way the coaches see fit to use her.

“I do believe I have the skills to play both. You know, not every middle blocker in the country can say she or he can be an opposite. I don’t take that for granted, but I do know I have the skills. I train every day to be the middle and be the opposite; when the time comes it’s needed,” said Bibinbe. “I am comfortable hitting from both positions. I don’t have a preference. I know that I am able to help my team whenever the moment comes. If I have to be an opposite, I’m gonna be that opposite when they need me to be.”

Bibinbe joked that she would even play as the libero if the team asked her to do it.

“So if you ask me what skill I have, I can tell you I hit the ball as hard as I can,” she continued. “I can be an offensive middle blocker and I can also be a defensive middle blocker as I am growing to be the best I can. Or, why not the best in the conference?”

Bibinbe downplayed the difference between JUCO and D1 ball in an on-air interview midway through the season. She diverted credit to coach McGuyre, commenting on the importance of a good plan and only mentioning the speed of the game in passing. She pointed out the importance of preparation again when talking to me — “if I know how the other team gonna expect me to play, it makes my job a little easier” — but Walker underscored the change in game speed.

“I would say this past year she probably learned the most how to kinda just go fast more often, because the league she was playing in before, they would set her a little bit higher and slower. So, she knew there was gonna be four hands in front of her most of the time,” he said.

Baylor needed Bibinbe to catch up to the speed of the game physically last season, consistently getting to the right spot in time to make good on her opportunities to attack. This year, they’re looking for her to consistently make good decisions when she’s in position to attack.

“Being able to go fast and still use range… is something that we want her to continue to develop,” said Walker. “If a clear opportunity for her to hit isn’t there, either because the set is low or because the block in well-formed, that she’s able to default and be able to either tip it to a spot that’s open because there’s so many blockers in front of her, or at least not make a clear mistake and hit it out of bounds.”

However, the primary focus during the upcoming season will be on her defense. Walker spoke to me at length about how the team wants to see her improve as a blocker, using her hands in a more effective way to avoid getting tooled and positioning her body to make life easier for the backcourt defenders. What does that entail? Walker explained it this way:

“If she’s not able to get in a great spot with her feet, that she’s not necessarily reaching and, like, trying to close up the seam in a non-effective way. So, she’s kinda been working really hard to make sure that she’s putting herself in the best position to be more squared toward where she wants the ball to be blocked to, versus, like, where the hitter is coming from,” he said.

There’s too much to quote in its entirety, so I’d encourage you to read the full explanation in the transcript linked below.

Bibinbe herself shed light on another facet of the gains she needs to make, and admitted that it starts with the way she thinks about what’s going on in front of her in the midst of a game.

“If I start cheating on the block, which I feel like I was doing in the past, sometimes I wanna think for the other player. I’ll follow the setter, and I’ll anticipate. Now, I am training on not anticipating something. I’ll need to wait to see where the set goes and then go. That comes from my brain, then I train my feet to go where they need to go, not having to make a bad move and having to recover from that move. So, now I’m more focused on waiting where the set goes, waiting and then moving to set a good block,” she said.

She also told me with a chuckle that she trusts her size to give her an edge, saying this: “When I step on the court, people are not going to think about how good I play, just gonna think about ‘Oh, that girl’s a big girl!’ And if you can impact someone just like that, you’re already up.”

Because she is a native of Cameroon and not an American by birth, it will be a narrower road to the PVF for Bibinbe than someone with similar skills born stateside. The Federation allows only two foreign players per team, and most teams have invested at least one of those spots in a big-time European hitter. For a pro career in the states to materialize, making those improvements on the defensive side of the ball in non-negotiable.

Nevertheless, Bibinbe is keeping her eyes on the prize, and wore her heart on her sleeve as our interview came to a close.

“Just to think that America by itself is trying to create a league such as this one, it makes my heart beat because after getting my degree here at Baylor, I would love to keep playing volleyball in America.”

Some quotes have been lightly edited for clarity. Read the full transcript of both interviews here. You can watch full Baylor games here and here, or by searching “Baylor volleyball” on YouTube.