Monday Musing

I think strawberry shortcake is vastly underrated. I’m talking the angel food cake variety and not the communist sympathizers that use a biscuit. I love biscuits but everything has a place in this world and biscuits have no place with strawberries and whipped cream. Oh, and not the fascist that use ice cream instead of whipped cream. I just feel sorry for their childhood that would lead them down this path. Where is this leading? No where…I just have the makings for strawberry shortcake in the kitchen and I’m really hungry.

I’m starting work on my Preseason Top 25, which should be out by the end of this week or sometime next week. Someone wrote on a volleyball forum asking if you would expect a team that has won the national championship in their existence to win this year or anyone of the remaining schools that have yet to win a championship? I think it’s an interesting question and goes to the fact that DIII volleyball really has its elite and it’s really tough to break into that group. For the record, the schools that have a championship and are still in DIII are Emory, CMS, Calvin, Cal Lutheran, Hope, St. Thomas, Wittenberg, Washington-St. Louis, Juniata, UW-Whitewater, La Verne, Central (Iowa) and Elmhurst.

In the last decade, here are the teams that have yet to win a championship that appeared in the Final 4;  UW-Eau Claire, Ithaca, Northwestern-St. Paul, Southwestern, Carthage, Hendrix, UW-Stevens Point, Christopher Newport and Eastern. Wittenberg’s victory in 2011 was the last time all of the Final 4 teams hadn’t won a championship.

Did you know that the last time the New England Region won an Elite 8 match was in 2001. You have to remember that due to their size they are almost always gifted a spot in the Elite 8 and this past year they had two spots. The only New England Region team to appear in a championship final was MIT in 1984. They lost in straight sets to UC San Diego.

My next big project is to highlight some of the top returners at each position. This series of articles should be done by the end of the month.

I’ve added to the website a countdown clock to the start of the season. It’s also a reminder that I’m probably not going to finish my project of recreating all of the NCAA Tournament brackets.

I’m still waiting on a few schedules to be published so I can wrap-up my last post on these schools. I don’t want to mention them but it involves a Cyclone, a Mountaineer and a Blazer. Thinking of mascot names for a second, I have to believe that Tigers are the most common in the West Region?

While trying to track down the 2019 recruits, I’ve found 6 players that have verbally committed to a West Region school for 2020. Kind of impressive that these student-athletes have already figured out what they want. I’m struggling to think past the strawberry shortcake in the kitchen.