Christmas Eve Musing

First off ladies, my son is single and living in Chicago. You don’t have to settle for granddaughter status is all I’m saying.

No, my son does not read the site.

I thought I would send out a musing posts because, otherwise, I have to help my wife with dinner party preparations. She believes I’m still writing the party trivia questions that the “kids” have to answer to open presents.

No, my (hot) wife does not read the site.

You can actually find my Christmas letter at http://www.robertrochelle.com. In fact, you can go through the history of my letters if you like.

I should probably switch over to volleyball but I do wish everyone a great holiday season. I hope everyone gets a few days off and can spend it with family. This will be the first year where we don’t have both kids with us as my son is doing the Chicago Polar Express train in Chicago and couldn’t get away.

Looking through my article idea page and it’s pretty light. I have a note that maybe I should look at UC Santa Cruz and how their results played out as opposed to Christopher Newport. CNU got a tournament bid. I doubt I do it but at the time I was wondering how many results would have had to swap for UCSC to get a bid. Their schedules were equally tough. Spoiler – It probably would have had to start with UCSC beating CNU the three times they played them.

I had another note to look at the Trinity and CMS regionally rankings because it just seemed like Trinity just couldn’t catch a break despite being ahead of CMS most weeks. I think it actually makes sense the way the committee did it but still kind of strange. In the end, they both made the Elite 8 and had great seasons.

Maybe I should also just clear through some notes.

I had a note that CMS got in trouble at the MIT Regional for having an illegal jersey. They had another set they ended up wearing but it was the first time they had been challenged on it all year. Strange time for the NCAA to enforce the rule for a clear contrast between numbers and jersey color. There were numerous times during the year where I saw different teams with virtually no contrast so it’s a wide spread issue and something, if I was a coach, would want clarification on before ordering anything new. I also heard that CMS turned the tables on UW-Oshkosh with the jersey issue before their Elite 8 match. The Titans were forced to wear a different jersey. So, in some ways, New England played a small role in the Elite 8, after all.

I think I’ve written about the fact that based strictly on criteria, NYU should have been the #1 seed in the Elite 8. I got some confirmation on that during the championship but humans with minds actually stepped in and did the right thing. That’s nothing against NYU, it’s just that UWO and Juniata needed to be the top two seeds in some order.

Oh, I am working on an SOS article but I’ve gotten sidetracked a couple of times. The worst thing that can happen to me while writing is to get something wrong and then to riff on that for a few hundred words. Then catch my mistake and have to go back and make everything work. Ugh. It’s happened twice on this article so far.

Undefeated teams that have won the DIII Championship:

• 1992 WashU went 40-0 and lost 6 sets all year. They never went to 5-sets.

• 1999 Central went 41-0 and lost 9 sets all year. They went to 5-sets once.

• 2019 Johns Hopkins went 35-0 and lost 8 sets all year. They also went to 5-sets once.

• 2023 Juniata went 35-0 and lost 6 sets all year. They never went to 5-sets.

Maybe we can say that the 1992 WashU team and the 2023 Juniata team are the best ever?

I guess I should also mention that the 2001 La Verne team was 27-1 and their only loss was a forfeit as they didn’t have enough players after a number of players were suspended. I’ve kicked around an article about this team but have never really pursued it.

Juniata is the first team to start, go the entire year and finish number 1 in the AVCA rankings.

Last thing in my notebook is “Portal”. There is probably an article here or maybe a page of DIII players looking for new teams. Speaking of that, I’m probably a week or so out from putting up the 2024 Recruits Page. It’s the circle of volleyball life!

I’ve got guests coming in about an hour. For my family and friends, this night is probably the highlight of the year. It’s really just about spending time with people that you’ve chosen to love in your life. To everyone who loves volleyball and especially to all of my granddaughters, Merry Christmas.