Points/Set Standings (3/3/21)

We added Concordia, Centenary, Dallas and UT-Dallas to the standings. George Fox played but it wasn’t against a DIII opponent so it doesn’t count. Why? Because this is DIII, baby! If all goes according to plan, we’ll have the last 6 teams in the standings this time next week.

 As a reminder, this article attempts to create a West Region standing based on Points/Set. I also want to highlight matches where a team was out performed in the statistic but still won the match. Quick refresher, Points/Set are the points a team “earns” in a match divided by the sets played. Earned points are kills, service aces and team blocks. Errors by the other team obviously help you win the match but they hurt you in this statistic. The statistic is only presented for DIII matches against DIII opponents. Let’s go ahead and drop the standings of the 23 teams in the West based on Points/Set:

So, I think I teased that we had a new leader in the standings earlier this week, and we did for a short time, but matches from yesterday changed that. That’s right, this data is through Tuesday.

I believe there were 28 matches since last Monday played in the West Region when both opponents were DIII teams. Of those 28 matches, only one was a case where the team scoring the higher Points/Set lost the match. I believe that makes three cases of this for the entire season and, as it turns out, PLU is on the wrong side of two of them. It was the second match between Puget Sound and PLU where Puget Sound won in 4-sets. Puget Sound scored a very good 17.25 P/S but PLU outdid them with an outstanding 18.5 P/S. Still the Loggers took the win in what was a very exciting match. Just to show we care PLU now owns our record of most points for a losing team. Of course, they take the record from themselves (scored 16 P/S in a losing match to Whitworth). This may require some further digging down the road but suffice to say PLU hasn’t been the luckiest team in the West Region this season. As for that specific match, the main cause was that the PLU set they won was by 9 points and the three they lost were by a combined 7 points. They also hit very well in all 4-sets.

Another record tracked at the bottom of this article is highest differential for a winning team and that was broken several times this past week. Ultimately the new record holder is UT-Dallas. They had 18.67 P/S in a match with Belhaven where the Blazers only managed 7 P/S.

Looking at the standings and Trinity retains the top spot although they did drop a little in P/S. UT-Dallas was leading after their opening round of matches but by adding in the ones from yesterday, they slot into the second spot. Whitworth holds the third spot while McMurry drops from 2^nd to 4^th. UMHB comes in at #5 and is the last team in the West Region with a 17 P/S or better average. Concordia enter the standings at 6^th and while LeTourneau holds at 7^th, they did increase their P/S average by 1.75 P/S with two outstanding matches against Belhaven. PLU also increased their P/S but they ended up falling 3 spots. Rounding out the top 10 are Colorado College and St. Thomas.

I mentioned UT-Dallas and Concordia so let’s look at the other two teams added to the standings this week. Centenary comes in at 18 after their two losses to St. Thomas. Dallas struggled in their matches with Colorado College and is in the final spot in our standings.

Overall, we now only have one team with an “elite” (18+) P/S and that’s Trinity. Four teams sit at 17+, which means in a normal year they would be heavy favorites to win their conference or get an at-large bid. Three teams sit at 16+ and this is the hope and pray area for at-large teams.

Tacked Records

Highest P/S differential for a winning team: UT-Dallas +11.67 P/S over Belhaven Highest P/S differential for a losing team: HSU +2.8 P/S in loss to ETBU Lowest P/S by a winning team: ETBU 10.4 in win over HSU Highest P/S by a losing team: PLU 18.5 in a loss to Puget Sound