How will Penn State's offense thrive under Stucky?

Florida transfer setter Alexis Stucky announced her commitment to Penn State on December 14, 2025. Having addressed a need following Addie Lyon’s departure, the Nittany Lions must adjust to a new system.

Penn State also looks for more structure at the setter position following the early departure of Izzy Starck from the program in 2025.

The loss to the roster in September thrust Lyon into the role, just in time for a Top 5 clash with Kentucky at home for her first match as a starter on September 5.

The graduate transfer from Saint Louis University mainly fed the ball to Kennedy Martin in that match, assisting on 17 of her 18 kills as Kentucky swept Penn State.

When it came to scoring, the Nittany Lions stayed in-system as Lyon picked up 36 of the team’s 39 assists. Penn State was not completely successful on offense, however, recording a .240 team hitting clip.

From there, Lyon helped stabilize the offense in wins against New Hampshire and Bucknell, using Penn State’s competitive edge to her advantage as she spread out her assist numbers across six hitters in both matches.

The squad then had to prepare for yet another tough Top 5 home test with Pittsburgh looming on September 17.

Lyon distributed the attack evenly, though it did not translate well as the Nittany Lions ended up with a .169 team hitting percentage, the second-lowest number of the season to that date, in the four-set loss to the Panthers.

For the most part after that, the message was clear: just get the ball to Martin.

In each of the 24 matches following the loss to Pittsburgh, Martin led Penn State in kills assisted by Lyon. The squad would go 15-9 in that stretch and 12-8 in Big Ten play.

The Nittany Lions went 6-3 when Martin had 25 or more kills in a match and 8-3 when Martin recorded 50 or more swings with Lyon as the setter.

Let’s go one step further and actually quantify the difference between Lyon and Stucky based on last year.

Controlling the offense

Putting the context behind the numbers starts with finding out how often a setter contributes to their team’s assists.

Instead of using every match, let’s take a look at matches where these two setters played the entire match as the primary setter.

In these matches, Lyon had 1,106 of the team’s 1,338 assists, meaning she controlled 83 percent of the team number.

Penn State was 8-5 when Lyon’s number was below the baseline (0.83) and 9-5 when her number was above it. One match laid on the baseline, which was when Minnesota swept the Nittany Lions on November 14.

The average team hitting percentage in those matches for the Nittany Lions was .248, and naturally the team went 14-0 when exceeding that number.

For greater context, we put the setter assist share on the x-axis and team hitting percentage on the y-axis and established baselines as described above.

High hitting percentage often translates to wins, but the Nittany Lions went 7-0 below the setter assist share baseline and 7-0 above it.

Therefore, Lyon did not need to control as much for the offense and team to succeed. It also points to Penn State’s ability to score while out of system.

On the other hand, Stucky had 993 of the team’s 1,186 assists, meaning she controlled 84 percent of the team number.

The baseline of 84 percent slightly favored more of the matches above it than below it. Florida was 5-5 when Stucky fell below the baseline and 9-4 when she exceeded it.

The average hitting percentage for Florida was .245, and the team went 12-1 when going over the baseline. The lone loss in that stretch was a four-set loss to South Carolina on November 2.

Likewise with Lyon, Stucky had an even split along the setter assist share baseline, albeit below the hitting percentage average.

Florida went 1-4 when falling below both baselines in the bottom left and 1-4 when only falling below the hitting percentage baseline in the bottom right quadrant.

Good passing will be essential to ball control for Stucky at Penn State so she can contribute more to the hitters.

Measuring offensive volatility

The more unpredictable an offense is, the tougher it is for opposing blocking teams and back rows to prepare for it. This does not automatically translate to higher hitting percentage, though it adds a chaos factor to the game.

This calls for a more advanced stat we call ‘kill entropy.’

Entropy is defined as ‘a measure of molecular disorder, randomness, or uncertainty within a system.’

Putting together kills and entropy makes a stat that measures the spread of kills between hitters that a setter sets to.

The formula is listed here:

Setter-Assisted K% = Hitter kills assisted by setter / team kills

Hitter SAK% Log = Setter-Assisted K% * natural log of (Setter-Assisted K%)

Hitter Log Sum = -1 * (Sum of all Hitter SAK% Logs)

Kill Entropy = Hitter Log Sum / Natural log of (# of hitters)

Overall, Lyon’s kill entropy amounted to 0.72 on the season. Penn State went 13-7 when going above this baseline.

Martin had more than double the amount of setter-assisted kills (444) than the player with the next-highest overall kills (216), which was Maggie Mendelson, in Lyon’s matches as the primary setter in 2025.

The Nittany Lions often thrived under predictability last season, going 10-5 when Lyon’s kill entropy was below 0.80.

With Stucky, however, the offense moved quickly and had more hitters involved more often as her kill entropy amounted to 0.74 on the season. Florida went 13-8 when going above this baseline.

Stucky’s number was at or above 0.80 in 12 matches and at or above 0.85 in six matches in 2025, with both of those conditions bringing records of .500 or better.

Stucky assisted on 292 of the 368 kills from Florida outside hitter Jordyn Byrd in those full-participant matches, though middle blocker Jaela Auguste was not far behind as a target with 233 of her 259 kills coming from Stucky’s sets.

Byrd took up most of the setter-assisted kill leaderboards in those matches, however Auguste was up there once and outside hitter Aniya Madkin did so three times.

How the Penn State offense fits in

The new system may thrive as Texas transfer outside hitter Whitney Lauenstein has proved to be another serious option for Stucky at the pins after leading the team in kills with 18 in the spring matches.

The only concern is that Lauenstein likely won’t be a six-rotation hitter, as defensive specialist Jocelyn Nathan had substituted for her in the back row.

The passing is a discussion for another day, but not being in the back row means Lauenstein would not have a chance to vary her routes with a D-ball or bic attack.

Martin knows the Stucky system all too well, as the two saw limited action on the court together in 2023 and 2024.

As for the third option, the middle blocking trio of Gabrielle Nichols, Ryla Jones and Kendall Northern were only slightly behind Martin and Lauenstein in the hitting department during the spring.

Any duo combination out of the three of them will start in any given match in 2026, and they all showcased great route-running abilities during the scrimmages. The Penn State offense will continue to improve so long as they can execute the slide attack.

Emmi Sellman did not have many kills as the second outside hitter option, recording only five from Stucky’s assists and seven overall during the spring, however her six-rotation ability opens up the back-row offense.

Caroline Jurevicius sat out during the spring, though she has shown flashes of being a terminal hitter and a potential bailout option that Penn State would love to have back in the fall and will likely compete with Sellman for the second outside hitter spot.

Jurevicius and Alexis Ewing are both front-row-heavy hitters, though Ewing hopes to set up for a bright future in Happy Valley as the current backup to Martin at the right-side hitter position.

In conclusion, the right hitters will adjust to the system and prepare to get the ball every time it leaves Stucky’s hands.

Currently, there seems to be enough players to fit the bill following a promising spring. Only time will tell as the offense looks to be near the top of the Big Ten once again.