Although Morgan Hentz hasn’t ripped a kill, made a block, nor even served a single ball, she just might be the Most Valuable Player through the first three weeks of Athletes Unlimited’s volleyball season.
Hentz unquestionably has been the biggest winner, undefeated in her nine matches, victorious in 24 out of 27 sets.
After going 3-0 in the opening week as a member of captain Leah Edmond’s squad, the 5-foot-9 libero is 6-0 as the captain of her own teams during Weeks 2 and 3 of competition at Legacy Park in Mesa, Arizona.
Hentz not only has been the inspirational floor leader for her squads, she has proved to be an impeccable judge of talent in AU’s weekly drafts. Standing at No. 2 on the leaderboard, due in no small part to the league-best 1,500 “win points” accrued by her teams, the former Stanford All-American will get a third opportunity to demonstrate her captain’s acumen this week.
The other captains picking in Week 4’s draft on Tuesday will be Leah Edmond, Alli Linnehan and Sydney Hilley.
The exclamation point to Team Hentz’s dominating Week 3, during which it took eight of nine sets, came in the finale on Monday night when it walloped Team Edmond in a showdown between squads that had won their first two matches. Hentz’s bunch put Edmond’s shellshocked crew in the rear-view mirror by double digits after a near-flawless opening set, and another hitting-on-all-cylinders stanza made the margin 25 points at the end of two. The 75-47 aggregate victory (25-14, 25-11, 25-22) was wrapped up with the first point Team Hentz notched in the third set and marked the second-fewest points allowed in AU history.
With an epic performance on Monday night, middle hitter Molly McCage punctuated a massively productive week that saw her soar to No. 6 in the standings. The 6-foot-3 veteran hit .823 (that’s not a typo) with a career-high 14 kills on 17 errorless swings, and chipped in two solo blocks, a couple of block assists and four digs for good measure. McCage, 29, was voted the match’s first MVP, which came on the heels of another MVP1 on Sunday and an MVP3 on Friday.
Outside hitter Linnehan was the second MVP on Monday after cracking 14 kills on 33 swings with zero errors. She also was MVP 2 on Sunday. Linnehan’s 500 “win points” (60 for each aggregate victory and 40 for claiming eight of nine sets), 437 “stat…
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