Odds & Ends

I wanted to do a shorter Weekly Wrap-Up given all of the conference specific information in the other posts. This will mainly be observations and thoughts on the past week.

Let me first give some love to UC Santa Cruz and Mills College. Santa Cruz is currently 6-15 and I don’t see them getting a Pool B bid (i.e., a bid set aside for independent teams). They will be going to the Saint Kate’s Invite in St. Paul, Minnesota and even a victory over ranked Gustavus Adolphus won’t be enough to help, I fear. (Note, I have tentative plans to be in that area later in the week…it would have been so cool to show up and cheer for the Slugs.) Mills College is struggling and they just need to keep building for the future.

Looping back to the Mid-Conference Reviews, if you were counting the at-large bids then you noticed I only gave the West Region three. This means only 7 West Region teams in the NCAA Tournament. It also means that the NCAA regional will be in Texas (either UMHB or Trinity). I think the chances of getting 8 teams in the tournament is roughly the same as only get 6, to be honest. Now, things can change and we really just need one or two teams to get on a hot streak but the SCIAC is our best hope and they just keeping beating up on themselves. We can call it quality depth but quality depth doesn’t translate into NCAA criteria.

#17 Ohio Northern were swept by Baldwin Wallace this week. Ohio Northern is a good team that has wins over Carnegie Mellon and Hope this season. Baldwin Wallace is 22-2 (!) but really hadn’t played anyone. Undefeated #16 Johns Hopkins (who also had a pretty weak schedule) lost to unranked Dickerson who is currently 8-12 on the year. That is a bad loss and should hurt Johns Hopkins in the AVCA rankings more than it will. (Update – Arcadia just beat Johns Hopkins in 5-sets today.)

The other big upset on the week was #11 Washington-St. Louis beating #2 Colorado College in 5-sets at home. Colorado College is still without Jordan Mullen (studette outside hitter) and looking at the box score of the WUSTL match you could see Coach Swan trying to find someone that could put the ball down on the outside. I’m not sure when she’ll be back or if the season is a wash for her. I don’t want to read too much into this one loss or even Trinity’s struggles in their matches with IWU and Chicago but the West Region didn’t show their normal selves to the nation this year. Discarding CMS for a second, but our best wins were Cal Lutheran’s win over #4 JWU (RI) and Trinity’s win over #10 Gustavus Adolphus. And…that’s basically it. Either by scheduling quirks or poor performance we don’t have a lot of Top 25 wins under our belts. We’ve already seen past years where the West Region had top teams from 1 to 10 and only get 7 teams in the tournament. Yes, I’m worried.

Switching gears to Live Stats for a second. I don’t know all of what goes into this application but it’s been pretty poor this season. Let me pick on Southwestern for a second…”live” stats means the stats are LIVE! Numerous times this year the stats freeze for long periods of time and Southwestern isn’t the only school that seems to have this problem. And don’t get me started on the nationwide epidemic of NOT finishing out the match with the last point! It seems every third match stops mysteriously at 24 something and then it’s frozen for hours. I want to appreciate all of the efforts that keep me informed but if you have just one job please make sure you give out that final 25^th point to the winning team. And, holy cow, close out the sets properly! If you look down and see your set is 36-29 there is a PROBLEM! (It’s at this point that I firmly believe everyone reading this has started a slow clap that has now built into a standing ovation with shouts of making me the NCAA president.)

Oh, Calvin is now the last undefeated team in the nation. They play a tough closing schedule so an undefeated Calvin team come tournament time would be impressive.

This week the RACs go through a practice session prior to the first published rankings next week (October 17). Now, they’ve been meeting up to this point and going through the criteria but it’s going to get real…quickly.

Cal Lutheran…wins 6 straight (including JWU!)…losses 6 straight…wins 4 straight…losses 3 straight. They play at La Verne and then play CMS at home so they have to really pick it up to avoid turning this 3 match losing streak into 5.

Austin College had their bus break down on the way to LeTourneau for a match. Coach Garza said it was the first time in 23 years he’s had to cancel a match.

I didn’t mention this in the mid-conference reviews but player of the year so far is probably between Colorado College Lizzy Counts, CMS Amanda Walker or CMS Phoebe Madsen. Someone you wouldn’t think of for this award would be Whitworth’s Jessica Schmautz (leads the West Region in points/set). I had Lizzy Counts in my preseason predictions but I’d probably go with CMS Phoebe Madsen at this point only because she was the glue that kept that team together through their injuries. Still a lot of time left to change that non-vote of mine.

Freshman of the year is going to Sophie Srivastava (Chapman) – she leads the nation in triple-doubles.

Injury notes – Whittier’s Ashley Whittall has been missing in action for the last 4 matches and has played injured for a few matches prior. Pomona-Pitzer has lost Julia Zwaal for the last 5 matches. Rumor has it that CMS Melanie Williams is back at practice. She was my preseason freshman of the year pick. CMS Regan Dinovitz has played in the last 5 matches after missing the entire season. McMurry’s Jordyn Burnell has been out the last 4 matches. As mentioned above, still no Colorado College Jordan Mullen. Sending healing thoughts out to all of our student athletes!