Saturday, Sept 17 Match Day!

Update: Early start to the day. Too early for me plus QPR is playing. Divided loyalties.

UMHB takes the first set on UTD but UTD is winning the second. Northwestern survived a scare from Clarkson.

NYU and WashU going to a fifth set.

UT-Dallas up 2-1 but UMHB up in the fourth. And…UMHB wins the 4th so they are going to a 5th set.

Big lead for NYU but WashU takes the turn at 8-7.

Whoa. UT-Dallas is up 8-0 in the 5th set.

WashU takes the match 15-13 in the 5th.

Meanwhile, UMHB hasn’t scored in the 5th set. It’s 10-0. Yikes. 11-0. 12-0. No shutout! UMHB gets a point and it’s now 12-1. UTD wins 15-5.

Southwestern is up 2-1 on Scranton after dropping the first set.

Scranton forces a fifth set as Southwestern continues to struggle despite changing things up in this match.

Tough day for Hope as they drop 2 at home.

LETU beats Concordia in 4-sets and I’ve decided I have no clue how the ASC will go this year.

19-17 Scranton as SU drops their 3rd of the weekend.

Whittier is either leading or behind to UC Santa Cruz. I believe it’s UCSC but the stats are backwards (again).

Back to Southwestern and I’m not going to dog pile on to my own team but just weird. I’ve seen good teams just not have it for some reason and that appears to be the case here. Remember that this was a 2nd round NCAA Tournament team last year and they really only lost an oppo. Now, that oppo was really good and that position has turned out to be a concern this season. Still, the rest of the pieces are there. There is time to figure it out but it means winning conference especially if Colorado College is also in a down year.

Top 25 is done. Only upset, I think, was WashU over NYU.

I guess Whittier was winning. They take the match over UC Santa Cruz 3-1. A surprising result. It’s kind of a weird situation for the SCIAC teams. You want UCSC to be regionally ranked in Region VI but that won’t happen if you keep beating them.

Juniata handles La Verne pretty well. Not surprising but still a good weekend for ULV regionally.

Break up Whittier. They also beat Endicott today. I’m still 10% wondering about some of these box scores.

Puget Sound is up 2-0 on Whitworth. Didn’t see that coming. UCSC is up on Pomona-Pitzer after losing to Whittier. Didn’t see that coming. Willamette is up 2-0 on Pacific. Didn’t see…well, you get it.

I guess the NWC isn’t over after the first weekend like I thought. Puget Sound sweeps Whitworth.

Cal Lu sweeps Endicott. The Endicott losses are a little surprising to me. They just beat MIT so I thought they would do alright this weekend. It definitely gives the SCIAC teams an advantage over the New England schools come selection time if MIT turns out to be one of the stronger teams there.

Whitman takes set four to force a fifth set against PLU. It’s the last match of the night. Whitman gets to 15 and takes the match.

Top 25 Results

#4 Emory 3 vs Case Western 0#4 Emory 3 Rochester 0#5 Calvin 3 Clarkson 0#5 Calvin 3 Elmhurst 0#6 NYU 2 #20 WashU 3Brandeis 0 #6 NYU 3#7 Northwestern 3 vs Clarkson 2#7 Northwestern 3 #9 Hope 0#8 Gustavus Adolphus 3 Grinnell 0#8 Gustavus Adolphus 3 Loras 0#11 Otterbein 3 #9 Hope 0Elmhurst 2 #11 Otterbein 3#12 Berry 3 Sewanee 0Lakeland 0 #13 UW-Eau Claire 3St Catherine 0 #13 UW-Eau Claire 3#14 Johns Hopkins 1 Chris Newport 3Concordia (Wis) 1 #15 UW-Whitewater 3North Central 1 #15 UW-Whitewater 3Asbury 0 #16 Wittenberg 3Geneva 0 #16 Wittenberg 3#17 Wesleyan 3 Johnson & Wales 1#17 Wesleyan 3 Keene State 1#18 MIT 3 Mount Holyoke 0#19 Tufts 3 Trinity (CT) 1Carnegie Mellon 1 #20 WashU 3Illinois College 0 #22 Albion 3Baldwin Wallace 1 #22 Albion 3Concordia-Moorhead 0 #24 Augsburg 3

Random Thoughts: More of the same today.

I’m unfortunately writing this up late but it does give me a chance to know what happened from yesterday.

I didn’t get a chance to write about some stuff since I wasn’t near the computer yesterday evening so I may branch off below.

La Verne/Trinity – Trinity is not losing this, but a great weekend for La Verne and they have certainly put themselves in line for a good regional ranking.

UTD/UMHB – I mean this is the big ASC match of the season. This and the return match. Winner gets to host the ASC Tournament. This year, no clue. UTD just came off a loss to Concordia and a close win against LETU. No idea where their level of play is right now. UMHB seems to have recovered so they are my pick here but you have to figure both teams will be up for this one. (On the flip side, I did have a friend message me that he wouldn’t be surprised if both teams found a way to lose this one.)

LETU/Concordia – Concordia seems to have found something. Sometimes teams don’t jell right away. A lineup change here or there matters greatly at times. We’ll see if that’s the case but give me Concordia until they burn me again.

Southwestern/Scranton – Speaking of teams that haven’t jelled. No clue about my Pirates. Here’s the thing, I’ve seen them play and a very high level. I have also seen them be (frankly) really bad. Unfortunately they didn’t figure it out fast enough and they have a tough Trinity team in their conference. They need to focus on finding the right mix and winning conference. It should start today.

Minn-Morris/Cal Lutheran – Nice win by Cal Lu against Colorado College but CC doesn’t seem to be the team of old. Still CLU should win this one.

La Verne/Juniata – Here is La Verne’s card into the NCAA Tournament. Win this match. They took down two SCAC teams and now this is their signature win. It won’t be easy and I don’t think they can do it but that’s what is on the line.

Colorado College/CMS – I didn’t get a chance to discuss CC yesterday. I heard that they lost an outside to injury, which never helps things. Based on how they played yesterday, this won’t be close. CMS is just dominating folks right now and CC is playing better teams but not reaching their levels. If this keeps up, the SCAC will only put one team in the NCAA Tournament and that almost never happens. If I’m looking at NCAA teams from the west I’ve got CMS, Trinity, CMS, ASC winner and who? La Verne is certainly in contention. Pomona-Pitzer has a shot but it will help greatly if they beat UCSC today. That’s really it. I usually do a Watch List each year to highlight everyone’s chances but I just did it.

Whittier/Endicott – Let’s go Poets!

Cal Lu/Endicott – Let’s go Regals!

Pomona-Pitzer/UCSC – I think Pomona needs this. The CC win may not be what they hoped it would be. I think UCSC could be regionally ranked in Region VI so this becomes more important. Then take a match or two off of CMS and La Verne during conference play.

NWC Matches – Whitworth, PLU, Linfield and Pacific. The only question is the Linfield/L&C match.

I’m really kind of down over the performance by the west so far this season. It happens. All you can do is look forward and improve each day. I always say you can’t win an at-large bid early but you can lose one. We’ve had a number of teams lose them through two weeks.