Cardinal’s libero ready to dig in at Final Four
For a position that has been part of college volleyball for only about 15 years, the libero can be critical. Being a defensive specialist takes a special skill set: the reflexes of a hockey goalie, the nimbleness of a gymnast and the guts of a ski jumper.
Morgan Hentz, Stanford’s first Pac-12 Libero of the Year since the award’s inception in 2011, wraps it all up in a 5foot-9 package. And she can’t get enough of the position. “I love making a dig when we put it away,” she said. “That’s the best feeling ever.”
She and her teammates on the defending national champion Cardinal are the No. 3 seed in the NCAA Final Four in Kansas City, Mo. They play No. 2 Florida in the semifinals at 6 p.m. Thursday after No. 1 Penn State meets No. 5 Nebraska at 4 p.m.
Hentz leads the Cardinal (30-3) with 4.04 digs per set and has just 11 reception errors this season. As a freshman last year, she set the school record with 630 digs, including 27 in the national semifinal against No. 1 seed Minnesota and 27 more in the final win over No. 5 Texas.
“Morgan makes incredible digs, and we see that every single day,” said Kevin Hambly, Stanford’s first-year head coach.
Libero means “free” in Italian. Considering the libero is not allowed to spike the ball or block it above the net, you’d think it means free from having any fun. Not true, Hentz says. She’s having the time of her life.
Because the libero spends a lot of time diving to keep powerful hits from hitting the floor, maybe the word should also mean “willing to absorb punishment.”
The trick is to let your abdomen absorb the shock, she said. “You’re not really landing on your hips or your knees. You get a bunch of bumps and bruises, but that’s just proof you’ve been playing.”
Not all surfaces are alike, she can attest. Most schools have hardwood floors, but two Pac-12 teams, Oregon State and Washington, and many international venues have a synthetic surface, Hentz said.
“My teammates like hardwood because it’s better for your knees,” she said. She likes the synthetic surface on which the Final Four will be played at the Sprint Center in K.C. because “it’s more slippery, so you can slide easier.”
She has been hit in the face plenty of times. “I’m kind of used to it,” she said. “It really doesn’t hurt that badly.”
Hentz was Gatorade Kentucky Player of the Year at Notre Dame Academy in Park Hills, Ky., a Cincinnati suburb. She was an outside hitter, but college coaches, impressed with her defensive skills, recruited her as a libero, which she had played for her club team and in USA Volleyball. She played on a team that took second in the Under-18 World Championship in Lima, Peru.
Her high school coach, Buck McCoart, said her anticipation skills were “off the charts. Anticipation and reading are the hardest skills to learn for volleyball players, but she was doing it at an early age. It was checkers to most girls at the high school level, but it was chess to her.”
Hentz has become a crowd favorite at Maples Pavilion. While the fans roar over a successful hit by the Cardinal, they react to her spectacular digs with a combination of both appreciation and amazement.
She usually doesn’t hear it, she said. “I try to just focus on the play at the time,” she said.
Briefly: Stanford is seeking its eighth national championship. Nebraska won the national title in 2015, and Penn State has won it six times in the past 10 years. Florida, on the other hand, hasn’t made the Final Four since 2002 and has not won a championship. … The Gators are playing a Pac-12 team for the third straight match, having beaten UCLA and USC in the Gainesville regional.
Tom FitzGerald is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: tfitzgerald@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @tomg fitzgerald