Saturday, Sept 23 Match Day!

Update: I took this shot of the family during TV Night. Decker likes The Bear. I cropped out the unnecessary people. Dany (the other cat) was protesting in the other room.

Alright. TLU/CC stream doesn’t have the score or an announcer. Live Stats don’t work for either match at SU. Annoyed.

Looks like CC/TLU have split with TLU leading early in the third. Trinity won their first set but UST is hanging tough.

NCAA Scoreboard for those that need it.

Springfield just took down MIT in 5-sets. They have a back-to-back with UC Santa Cruz to follow so nice opportunity for the Slugs to face a team that is tired and to see them up close right before playing. UCSC plays back-to-back getting MIT in the late game.

St Thomas takes down Trinity in the second set. All tied at 1-1.

Nice to see U of Dallas has working Live Stats. My faith in humanity has been restored.

CC had a nice lead late in set three and TLU comes back to tie at 24-24. At 24-23 there was some controversy that TLU had four contacts but I don’t think it was. The ball hit off the block and bounced off the shoulder/head of the two blockers. I think that is all considered a block and no contact. Anyway, TLU won that point to tie it up. CC had a 23-18 lead.

CC takes it 27-25. At 25-25 a huge double contact was missed on CC. No one complained. Went back and looked and it was pretty bad. Oh well. The big thing in this match is TLU has 7 blocks but are touching everything. CC up 2-1.

My long-term plan to take down the New England Region has hit a major milestone. More in the Weekly Wrap-Up on Sunday.

I’ve got UCSC and North Park listed as teams to look at for the Top 25. I probably have to add Springfield especially if they beat UCSC.

Emory is probably going to sweep Chicago but the first two sets went 28-26. Interesting.

TLU up 7-0 on CC in the fourth set. Yikes. Whatever happens TLU has something this year. The top 5 or 6 teams in the SCAC are as close to each other as I’ve ever seen.

And CC ties it up at 12-12. Crazy. Trinity is up 2-1. Dallas looks like they are going to get a sweep of Centenary but still time for the Ladies to turn it around.

Johns Hopkins and Mount Union playing a tough match. 1-1 and tied in the third. Mount Union is another future Top 25 team.

UW-Platteville is a team I’ve liked this year and they get Calvin today. Another Top 25 team? They drop the first set and are losing the second so maybe not. Interested in the Ohio Wesleyan/Wittenberg match. OWU is in my Top 25 and Wittenberg has only 2 wins but it’s still Wittenberg and their schedule has been really tough.

CC/TLU 15-15 third set (I think…1:55 mark) is an example of how scrappy CC is. Shanked receive causes a great chase. Get it over on three. Two pancakes (or near pancakes). Get it over. Then a block to win the point. The cynic might say, make a nice pass on the serve but the cynic is a jerk.

CC 24-22 ends TLU 26-24. For those not familiar with the SCAC or TLU, this is a match TLU would have already lost in past years. They always struggled to put away their chances at the end of the match. That is NOT the case with TLU last year or this year. This is going to a fifth set.

Emory does get the sweep 26, 26, and 22 over Chicago. Two extras and a three point win in the third.

This TLU/CC up referee hasn’t met a set he doesn’t think is perfect.

Oh Izzy. I didn’t see her in set five so I went back in the stream and she got hurt in set four. Hoping she’s back soon. Izzy Lipacis (CC) is just a great outside and in her senior year.

Trinity wins in four sets. TLU up 10-7 in the fifth.

TLU 14-13 in the fifth. And now Live Stats says TLU wins but I’ll confirm on video. Yup. Bummer ending. Tough one for CC with the loss and losing Izzy (again). Great win for TLU. Statistics were pretty close so no fluke here. TLU wants a say in the SCAC title again.

Centenary down 2-0 takes the third set against Dallas.

1 pm matches are ongoing. Tuned into Springfield/UCSC where Slugs have a small lead in the first set. And, I’ve jinxed them. Springfield with the lead now.

Mount Union takes down JHU in four sets. Ugh. Maybe I’ll just have 25 new teams in the rankings this week.

Springfield wins set one. I may need to skip set two because I’m not sure I saw UCSC score a point.

Springfield up 2-0. UCSC leading in third. Dallas won in 4 sets.

Watched a bit of the UCSC match. Springfield gets the sweep. Springfield’s serve was a problem for UCSC, as was Riley Donahue who had 22 Kills and 25.5 Points to lead both teams. UCSC Sydney Ahrendt looks hurt again. She was all taped up but still playing. UCSC actually had a better hitting efficiency than Springfield but less Points. An MIT win makes this a great weekend but they will need to play better. Springfield did all they could do and looked good.

Southwestern and Schreiner are tied 1-1.

Schreiner with a comeback in the third set for the win (up 2-1). Ran off a ton of points at the end. Just too many attacking errors (26) by Southwestern right now. Hate to say it, but right now Southwestern is looking at an 0-3 weekend and last place in the SCAC unless they can turn it around.

Whelp. Southwestern takes set four but lose in five to Schreiner. Giana Hilliard had 14 Kills while Taylor Braxton had 11. Neither team played particularly well as Southwestern hit 0.094 to 0.089 for Schreiner. Southwestern also had 60 Kills to 41 for Schreiner. The problem for the good guys was 41 attack errors (against 8 blocks for Schreiner). They had the same number of errors as Schreiner had kills. Crazy bad. Great win for Schreiner and a tough one for Southwestern (at home).

(Hot) wife just said she was going to get ready for our anniversary dinner. It’s 2 and half hours away. I think this means I’ll need to change out of my shorts and t-shirt at some point. I’m assuming the Birkenstocks will be okay. It’s these kind of subtle clues that you pick up on when you’ve been married for 34 years.

Sul Ross State wins in 4-sets. A little surprising to me but nice win for the Lobos.

Austin takes down Centenary in 4-sets. The 14 Kill club included Samantha Graham, Riley Abernethy and potential cat thief Olivia Linton. Centenary had their own in the club, Jaylin St. Martin.

Case Western Reserve sweeps NYU. I may need to really look at what NYU has done this season to be ranked.

I always love to see Live Stats with the wrong players under the wrong teams. It says CC is beating St Thomas but I’m assuming it’s the other way around.

UT-Dallas beat HPU in 4-sets. Bailey Schievelbein may have put a clamp on the Player of the Week with this single performance (27 kills 1 error 50 attacks 0.520). She is a first-year outside.

MIT gets a relatively easy sweep over UCSC. Volleyball can be weird at times. UCSC finishes 2-2 with wins over Endicott and Tufts. They have a really tough schedule so more at-large opportunities exist.

CMS made quick work of Oxy.

That’s about all I can do for awhile. Use the links for updates. Scoreboard link is above. Good luck to all and I should have time to update this evening.

Back. Trinity and Southwestern are in a fifth set. Crazy. Floor and ceilings. Saw the floor (again) in the fourth set. Need more ceilings.

Caltech with a big win over Pomona-Pitzer. Because of the schedule they play (mostly non-DIII teams) prior to conference, it’s hard to know what they have. Tonight it was a lot.

Austin won both of their matches today. TLU swept Schreiner. St Thomas took down Colorado College who just aren’t the same team without Izzy Lipacis.

Whittier is even with La Verne and that’s one of the only cracks we’ve seen with La Verne this season.

I think Southwestern has used ever formation possible today outside of the trusty 4-2.

We’ve got a couple of late matches done but some are split so will go longer.

Whitworth and La Verne are both up 2-1 in their matches. The rest is over.

The SCAC is just bizarre this year. TLU play Trinity tomorrow which should be interesting. Based on play today, it’s TLU, right?

It looks like after much discussion, I will be taking the 11 pm AND 4 am feeding tonight. This is how you stay married.

Watched the last two matches. Both went 5-sets. Both 5th sets were easy for the winning team. Whittier played very even with ULV until that set. They look like they could get one of the conference tournament spots. Another even match until the end was GFU/Whitworth. Big win for GFU who seem to be a favorite for their conference tournament.

Alright, box scores seem slow to be released tonight. I’ll update tomorrow. Wrap-Up tomorrow as well.

Random Thoughts: Another big day of conference matches with UCSC finishing up in the New England Region.

TLU/Colorado College will be a good one on a neutral floor. I’m writing this prior to the CC/SU match on Friday and that will probably tell us a bit about this one. I liked CC prior to the season so I’ll stick with them until proven wrong and hopefully that occurred yesterday.

UCSC gets Springfield and MIT both at MIT. These should be difficult matches but they did handle Tufts rather easily and I’m hoping Endicott, as well. Still, getting one of two here would be big.

Trinity/Southwestern is always a fun one and I’m sad I’ll miss this. In fact, I won’t even watch it on the stream as I’ll be out to my anniversary dinner with the (hot) wife. With that said, I’ve watched SU matches at weddings before so it is still possible.

Whitworth/GFU should be a really good one. GFU has been playing well and Whitworth sort of just keeps winning when it needs to.

La Verne/Whitter should be an easy win for ULV but playing away is always difficult.