Early risers, fallers among PVF draft prospects
A month into the NCAA season, these players' performances caught my eye.
STOCK UP
MB Claire Jeter, Arizona State
Jeter has been on one heck of a heater to start the 2024 season. She was error free for her first ten games and continues to be ridiculously efficient, hitting 89-for-164 so far with just two errors. As a player whose value is rested on the fact that she’s so steady-handed in everything she does, I’m not expecting regression to the mean to steamroll her the way it might another player. In the end, the health of her knee will probably have a greater impact on whether a team will draft Jeter than her current hot streak, but it’s been a delight to watch as she plays like an inexorable force of nature.
OH Bianca Bertolino, Georgia Tech
Standing six feet tall and densely built, Bertolino was named to the 2023 All-ACC team and the 2024 National Team of Argentina, her home nation. She’s a tough server and can hit the living daylights out of the ball while also being capable of a softer touch — according to the Georgia Tech website, she had the highest receiving percentage of any non-libero in Division I volleyball last year. She’s continuing her dominance this year, hitting .308 with 24 service aces and double-doubles in five of nine games. Among foreign born college players, I think Bertolino might have the best shot at getting drafted if she would like to continue playing stateside.
OPP Myah Conway, Old Dominion
The performance of ODU’s primary hitter has been encouraging as they packed a lot of games into their first month of play. She was named the MVP of the invitational hosted by her school and has hit for double-digit kills in eleven games. That comes out to a .369 hitting percentage, a good figure that she’s maintained on a high volume of attacks. More encouraging is that she looks more powerful than ever, clearly having added muscle over the offseason and looking noticeably thicker in the lower half. The PVF took a chance on two small school players in last year’s draft, and if they do it again this year, Conway is building a good case to be one of them.
STOCK DOWN
OH Madi Skinner, Texas
Skinner is capable of being an apex predator on the court. She looked like the best player in the country last year, and stepped her game up even further during the playoffs that led to an eventual Texas championship win. As a six rotation outside hitter, she is lethal both at the net and in the back row. She’s piled high with awards; if you’re reading this website, the odds are nearly certain that you need no introduction for her.
So, uh, what the heck happened? She’s suddenly hitting gobs of errors and being extremely inefficient, and Texas ratcheted back her volume after a 14-error catastrophe of a game against the Miami Hurricanes. She’s now hitting .214 and playing second fiddle to Reagan Rutherford which feels like a Twilight Zone thing to write but it’s the world we live in. This can’t last much longer. Right?
MB Manuela Bibinbe, Baylor
It was a gamble to include Bibinbe on my draft prospects watchlist, and so far, it’s not paying off. It appears that the Baylor coaching staff have declining faith in her as she has hit for low volume in most of their games so far and come up largely MIA in games where they’ve set her more frequently. Saturday’s win against Hawaii was a small rebound for her, hitting 5-for-13 and totaling 12.5 points. Things need to change for her and change quickly if she’s going to be on the draft radar at the end of the season. There will not be opportunities for a foreign born player under performing in college.
OH Sydney Palazzolo, Notre Dame
As a junior transfer from High Point, the transition to high level college volleyball was seamless for Palazzolo in 2023. She’s a six rotation outside hitter who led the ACC in kills and contributed 50 aces along the way. The court presence is there to back up that performance as well. At 6-foot-3, she’s essentially a physical prototype with a well proportioned body and a strong lower half. She was expected to bring a tremendous amount to the table for Notre Dame this season. I was a preseason believer and have tried repeatedly to feature her on this site.
Unfortunately, she has started the season on a cold streak, hitting just .211 with 41 errors for the Fighting Irish. She’s barely leading the team in kills despite being their highest volume attacker by a wide margin. This funk isn’t a death knell for her, but it’s definitely disappointing.
STOCK UNCERTAIN
MB Cara Cresse, Louisville
Standing at a listed 6-foot-6, Cresse has exceptionally long limbs which she puts to good use. She covers a ton of ground with her long, loping strides, at times appearing out of nowhere on a slide. She generates a boatload of rotational force with her long levers and kicks up plenty of dust with her power stroke. Additionally, that size enables her to create steep angles and access a number of shots from the high ball without letting it hang in the air long enough to be read by the opposing defense.Â
All that is to say, coming into the season, I had Cresse on my shortlist of players who had a shot at the first overall pick in December’s draft. However, she hasn’t been quite so dominant through the Cardinals’ first handful of games. I’m not pulling the plug, but hitting .288 on the year with a disaster game at Northern Kentucky without yet hitting for ten kills in a match is enough to raise my eyebrows. She’s a redshirt junior, and if things continue this way for her (which I doubt) she might return to school rather than go pro.