After the Carnage Musing

Okay, maybe not that bad but if you think that then you are not a Denison or Muskingum supporter.

Note – I added a Regional Polls post. Go vote for who you think will win each regional. (Hope it works.)

I’ve talked about my 2014 Southwestern experience in the past. For those that have missed it, I was sure my Pirates were getting in and they didn’t. The hurt is one of the greatest pains I’ve ever felt and, having gone through cancer treatments, I can honestly say none of it hurt me like 2014 did. So, it’s important to me that the selection committee do their job correctly. Did the 2021 version do that? For now, I have to withhold comment. I need to see the latest regional rankings and then have time to do some case studies.

There are other things to talk about so let me freeform them into existence.

No Trinity Regional. (Note – Need to cancel my hotel.) I haven’t sat down to see how many flights there are going to be. There are 6 Region X teams and all will need one. My thinking behind the Trinity Regional was that it would only take 5 flights to bring teams into San Antonio. Now, it’s possible that additional flights were going to be needed because Berry and Emory are difficult locations to deal with, as well. Bottom line, if there isn’t a Region X Regional then there is almost always a Berry or Emory Regional.

On a personal level, I really wanted to go and see a bunch of Region X teams play. I really wanted to meet a bunch of new parents, too. From a tournament standpoint, it appears the Trinity Regional was sacrificed to make all of the regionals more competitive. There appears to have been a lot more thought in making the regionals even as far as teams go. THIS IS NOT A BLANKET STATEMENT. Not all of the regionals are equal, but I believe the regionals are the fairest I’ve seen since I’ve been involved in DIII volleyball.

First, Calvin and Hope were split up.

Second, CMS and Trinity were split up.

These are not minor things to have happend.

Third, the committee did not create three easy regions as they have done in the past while equaling out the others. Normally, they would have two New England regionals and a New York regional that were silly easy (assumes no West Regional). There was more movement this year and for that I applaud the committee. Let’s take a closer look.

The MIT Regional has Bowdoin and Susquehanna. Not terribly tough but better than in the past.

The RIT Regional has Wesleyan, Babson and Juniata. Much tougher than in the past.

The Johns Hopkins Regional has Johns Hopkins so what else did they need to add? Tufts was a nice add here but I don’t buy into Cortland as a #2 seed. (We’ll talk about rankings and seeds in a moment.)

The Emory Regional is easier than in the past when they would dump 2 top West teams into it. Emory and Berry are good. CNU and Southwestern are nice adds. Difficult but not crazy hard.

The Calvin Regional has four good teams. Just an honest regional and that’s really the trick. Don’t put 5 or 6 or 7 top teams into a regional.

The UW-Eau Claire Regional, to me, is the toughest. Just having Eau Claire and Hope together. Yikes. It probably had to be somewhere and it’s better than it’s not Calvin and Hope. Northwestern, Gust. Adolphus and Chicago all were ranked pretty highly.

The more I look at it, maybe the Wartburg Regional is the “Regional of Death”? Wartburg, CMS, ONU, Colorado College and UW-Stevens Point. Plus Bethel. Yeah, this probably gets the tag. Wartburg is a tough place to get teams in so they had to fly some in. Interestingly it was CMS and Colorado College. Why that wasn’t Southwestern is interesting. Did the RAC have CC behind Southwestern? Did then not want to fly CC two time zones?

The Stevens Regional has Trinity and NYU and a couple of tough New York schools.

So, maybe the easiest region is MIT? Maybe RIT but they have Juniata. I have a small number of schools that I think can win the championship and the two regions that don’t have one of those teams is MIT and Emory.

The seeding is a little weird to me. RIT is better than Juniata? I think there are about 40 teams in this tournament better than RIT. I think Juniata has an outside chance at winning this thing. Cortland a 2 seed? When did New York schools get to be good? NYU proved it. Anyone else? There is a long history of New York schools being bad in the tournament. Ugh. ONU and UW-Stevens Point better than Colorado College? I think CMS caught a bit of a break avoiding ONU, Colorado College and Wartburg until the finals (if they make it). NYU is better than Trinity? I’ll give them this last one because winning the UAA is tough. Not like winning the SCAC. Wait. What?

I texted out “Crud” when I saw Southwestern make the tournament. Not because they made it but because it meant no Trinity Regional. Last regional hosted by a West Region team was 2017.

The regionals that will end on Saturday because they have schools that won’t play on Sunday are Emory (huh?), Calvin and UW-Eau Claire. Not sure what the Emory situation is. I mean, I know the other teams will have to pray a lot before they face my Pirates. Oh yeah! Didn’t see that one coming, did you?!?

I need to review my cheering order. Southwestern draws Washington & Lee who we visited during recruitment. If we win then we probably get Berry who are an honorary West Region team. I typically root for both of those teams. Then we’ve got UT-Dallas on the other side of the bracket. Love their coaching staff if you exclude Zach. (I’m on a roll right now.) Hey, why didn’t they switch CC and UTD? Has to be time zones.

Oh well. Waiting for the regional rankings to drop. I might have more thoughts then.

Update – I forgot to write about this in both musing posts today. You might remember that Google sent me some website statistics awhile back (they do it monthly) that says that my site is found when people search, “What is the hardest position to play in volleyball”. What was coming up was an old post on the toughest position to recruit. I thought, maybe I could get more views if I actually wrote an article about that so I did. This past month it’s like my 3rd highest viewed post and it was months ago. Just funny to me but I welcome everyone who found me through that search!