Regional Rankings Info

Update: Got my dates wrong. Had to modify this a bit.

Next week the Division III volleyball landscape will get their first peek into which schools are being thought of for a Pool C (At-Large) bid. The regional committees (RAC) have been having informal discussions for the last week or two and their first private polls will come out Wednesday. These results will not be made public. Next week the polls become public.

The first public poll is always interesting to me because you don’t have all of the criteria in place. As a reminder, here is the primary criteria:

• Won-lost percentage against Division III opponents.

• Division III head-to-head competition.

• Results versus common Division III opponents.

• Results versus ranked Division III teams as established by the final ranking and the ranking preceding the final ranking.

• Division III strength of schedule.

Here is the secondary criteria:

• Non-Division III won-lost percentage.

• Results versus common non-Division III opponents.

• Won-lost percentage during the last 25 percent of the season.

• Division III non-conference strength of schedule.

So, you can see with the first week, you don’t have the results against ranked teams in place. I’m also unsure how much common opponent information they get.

Why is the RAC rankings important? Because after the Pool A and Pool B bids are assigned the selection committee will go through the RAC rankings in order for Pool C bids. So, yeah…pretty important!

A couple of notes on the process. The RACs really look at the rankings at the specific region basis. It makes things simpler but often you’ll see discrepancies between the RAC rankings and the AVCA Top 25 poll. Most of the time it’s because the AVCA poll has teams ranked that shouldn’t be ranked. Other times it might be because an out-of-conference win may not play as well inside the RAC. For instance, a couple of weeks ago I had Chapman higher than any other SCIAC team (including CMS). Well, from a regional standpoint, this was correct but from a national perspective it seems kind of silly. A current example is UTD and UMHB. UTD is ranked in the Top 25 and UMHB has only just recently started receiving votes. But, UMHB swept UTD and only has two losses and I can guarantee the West RAC will have UMHB higher. It’s important to mention that the West RAC will only publicly rank 8 teams but will actually rank more teams than that. Just because a RAC only ranks 8 doesn’t mean that those are the only teams allowed to get Pool C bids.