The Texas Shootout!

Nothing says Texas like a good old fashion shootout. Heck, they happen on my block every couple of weeks and we love celebrating the winners and watching the kids shove the loser down the sewer drain. I’ve heard some blocks have incorporated the loser into a communal compost heap so the circle of life and all of that, I guess. Anyway, I started playing around with some volleyball statistics and got sidetracked by the high Strength of Schedule (SOS) numbers some of the New England teams pull off each year. I thought about writing a story on it and then remembered I already had! You can find that work of art here. This piece was about how the West Region could mimic the New England Region’s recipe for scheduling success and concluded that we simply can’t. It laid out a number of recommendations/suggestions with quite a few of those being nonsensical in the grand scheme of DIII volleyball life. On the flip side, one suggestion that I really liked was to formalize a tournament between the ASC and the SCAC. I call it the “Texas Shootout”.

So, here is my open letter to the powers to be at these two conferences. Smart men and women that read this blog and understand that I want only what’s best for my extended Texas family. (“Texas” in the sense that it also includes Louisiana, Mississippi and Colorado.) Let’s create the “Texas Shootout” as an end of the year ASC/SCAC Challenge that pits all of the teams from both conferences in a tiered format. Here’s how it would work. Since it’s the end of the year, we’ll know the order of finish of the two conferences. With the ASC dropping to 11 members and the SCAC coming up to 10 members next season, the difference in teams is negligible. The top 4 teams from each conference as defined by either conference records or overall non-DIII records will play each other once over two days. So, for this first group (or tier) there will be 16 matches. The next top 3 teams from each conference would then be placed in a second tier, which would result in 9 matches. Finally, we would have the final 4 teams from the ASC and the final 3 teams from the SCAC, which would result in 12 matches. Once problem is the number of matches (37) across the three tiers and the need to host this at one location (or two locations that are close to each other). An offshoot of this problem is the need to have enough hotel space for the 20 teams (assuming the host team doesn’t need a hotel). If the tournament was held over 3 full days with 6 or 7 matches a day on a court with a facility that had at least 2 courts then the math works. It would be better to have two locations reasonably close to avoid a full day of Friday matches. Southwestern and UMHB (or Concordia) would be a great option. UT-Dallas and Austin College (Dallas only has one court) would be another option. If you wanted to host at only one conference than it opens up HSU and McMurry or Trinity and TLU or ETBU and LeTourneau. I would assume that the conference would need to block off the hotel rooms and then the schools would fill in at the proper location once the standings are finalized. Remember, that the schedule could be setup for the teams to only play over two days in a staggered format. Regardless, the logistics are doable.

We already see the ASC and SCAC do a lot of crossover play today so why is this tournament needed? For one, I don’t think this tournament limits schools from continuing this crossover play. This tournament or should I say the “Texas Shootout as conceived by D3VbWest.Com” would achieve a number of goals. (Yeah, I changed the name. I think we can all agree that this new name is better?”) First, the top 4 teams in each conference will get a bump in their SOS calculation right before NCAA Tournament selection time. Second, the schools will get some top notch competition right before their conference tournaments. Finally, we’ve created a significant tournament that at a minimum would provide bragging rights between the two conferences. As an offshoot, the West Region RAC will sure have enough data points to rank the teams in these two conferences.

There you have it. I look forward to the “Texas Shootout as conceived by D3VbWest.Com” appearing on the ASC and SCAC 2020 schedules! (I just noticed that “Texas Shootout” might be in use in other sports. If this becomes a problem then I am fine with the “D3VbWest.Com Classic”.)