Friday, Oct 18 Match Day!

Updates: As I write this Match Day, I’m watching the Dallas Stars game with my (hot) wife. A commercial for Fort Worth comes on and it’s voiced by Jimmy Stewart. (If you don’t know who that is then we are done.) I say, “That was Jimmy Stewart.” My (hot) wife not only disagrees but vehemently disagrees. “I love Jimmy Stewart and that’s not Jimmy Stewart!” I then look it up and sure enough it was Jimmy. Somehow, I still don’t think I won that argument.

A reminder that I dropped a podcast yesterday on changes to the NPI Ranking.

No big changes from yesterday’s matches. Southwestern is now 0.01 points ahead of Trinity who is 0.01 points ahead of Ohio Northern. Can you imagine losing an at-large bid by that margin? Centre and UWSP are basically tied.

We are off. CC takes the first set with AC leading in the second.

AC takes the second set. Always tough at Colorado.

CC wins 3-1. Remember that AC beat them in a sweep at home. This puts CC in first in the Blue Division and they have a 1 match lead (at least) in the standings.

AC loses the first to Dickinson and then blows them out in the second before winning a narrow 3rd set.

Tough match but AC pulls out the 5-set win. UTD up 2-0 in their match.

Missed opportunity for Concordia. They had 2 set points but lost 27-25. Down 1-0. HPU up 1-0 over HSU. ETBU up 1-0 on UMHB. UTD gets the sweep.

A Trinity kick save not enough as TLU takes set one. They want a say in the SCAC title race. 19 kills for TLU in set one and 18 for Trinity. Wow.

25-17 SU but Concordia had an early lead. CTX just can’t get enough kills in this one. Their blocking is doing well and SU is making errors but they need to terminate more to take advantage. Trinity is blowing the doors off TLU in the second set right now. HSU won their second set against HPU big. Now tied there 1-1. ETBU up 2-0.

Trinity evens up their match with TLU.

Salisbury beats NYU. They were the higher NPI team but on the road. NYU is towards the bottom of the at-large window so that will not play well.

I just put on another out-of-region match and the announcer sounded like he was reporting an event from the 1920s. Kind of funny although I don’t think it was meant to be taken that way.

Southwestern winning big in the third set looking for the sweep. They scored over 20 Points/Set in the first and in this set (ongoing). Remember, 17 is really good.

ETBU gets the sweep over UMHB away.

Ugh. Payton Shiflet (SU) looks hurt again. She just hasn’t been healthy this season but has been really good when she has.

Flipped over to TU/TLU and there was a rally that went almost a minute. Great defense on both sides. SU with the sweep. HSU up 2-1 on HPU.

Reid and Mosley (ETBU) each had 14 kills in 3-sets against UMHB. Carly Berkman (SU) had 12 kills in her match. Nice job by Jaidan Adams coming in as a substitute late in set one and contributing.

24-24 and another long rally. TLU is so scrappy. The block comes through for TU and they go up 2-1.

Okay. Trinity announcers just did a shout out calling this match a “D3VbWest Classic”.

HSU gets the 3-1 win over HPU.

Big win for UWSP over IWU away. They just went in the at-large window and this will push them up the list.

Trinity gets a Fate kill and then a Rodriguez ace for the fourth set win. Great match. The margin between these two teams was probably 6 blocks. TLU had 2 more kills. Brylie Nedd (TLU) led both teams with 17 kills.

Colby and Tufts are in a fifth set.

Colby wins 15-10. Announcer said first win ever against Tufts? Probably at Tufts. They looked good. I would have liked to have seen the Tufts middle make a bit of a scene when a Colby player came underneath to get a ball (successfully). She had to dodge her but no call made.

Yes, first win by Colby at Tufts. All of the higher NPI teams won in our High NPI Matches.

Over in the NWC, we have four 2-0 matches going on. Winning are Puget Sound, Whitworth, Pacific and PLU.

Note – I lost some text I had switching between computers. Sorry about that.

Well, GFU has forced a fifth set against #24 Whitworth. Heading over there now.

Whitman has forced a fifth with Pacific. Will we get two reverse sweeps tonight?

Whitworth gets the turn at 8-3.

Now 10-3 and we get a GFU timeout.

14-12 Whitworth. GFU made a nice comeback but not enough bandwidth to finish it, I think. Whitman gets their reverse sweep.

Wow. Almost. 15-13 Whitworth wins. GFU just let them get too far in front in the fifth. Ella Jimenez (Whitworth) led both teams with 20 kills.

NCAA Scoreboard

Here are the High NPI matches (55+ vs 55+) tonight:

Region X Matches:

Random Thoughts: No SCIAC action today. Normally they would be off tomorrow, too, but there are a couple of matches.

Colorado College was supposed to host both Austin College and Centenary but the Centenary matches are postponed. They also have non-conference opponent Dickinson in-house.

The ASC have their 3 matches going tonight. The best has to be ETBU at UMHB. ETBU should be too strong but a top-level effort from the Cru could make things fun.

On the other side of the SCAC (the Gold Division), TLU goes to Trinity and Concordia goes to Southwestern. While SU should handle Concordia at home, that TLU/Trinity match will be a good one. Trinity is playing really well of late so they should be fine.

Finally, we have the NWC with 8 teams playing. The best match is probably Whitworth at George Fox. We are still waiting for someone in the NWC to take down Whitworth. PLU at Willamette might be close.