Thursday Musing

No matches today in the West but there are a couple Top 25 matches going today. #3 Northwestern plays Minnesota-Morris and #13 UW-Eau Claire plays Bethel. Northwestern shouldn’t have too much trouble but Bethel could give Eau Claire a good match.

Per Ricky’s “Last Team Standing” post, we are down to 6 undefeated teams in DIII. Looking through the teams and their upcoming schedules:

• CMS toughest match will be 9/24 against La Verne but I think they will get past them.

• Maine Maritime will be playing at Bowdoin this weekend and I think they will lose to either Brandeis or Bowdoin. Maine Maritime has really been squeaking by opponents this season.

• Northwestern has UW-Eau Claire on 9/28 but this is another team that I think will stay undefeated for a bit.

• Ursinus has Franklin & Marshall in a couple of days and could lose this match.

• WashU has Aurora and IWU tomorrow at IWU. I think they could lose one of these matches. Heck, they could lose both!

• Wesleyan has Susquehanna and NYU at home this weekend. They could lose that NYU match but I would still consider Wesleyan the favorites.

So, after this weekend, maybe just three undefeated teams?

Loyal readers will know that my daughter (who’s birthday is actually today), works for American Airlines. It allows her loving parents to fly when seats are open at a discounted fare. So, we’ll actually be down in San Diego this weekend for our anniversary (last minute trip). Our daughter was born the day before our 5^th anniversary. If I tell you it’s our 33^rd anniversary, you should have enough information to figure out any other open math questions regarding our family. Without any math, you should also figure out that updates this weekend are going to be a problem and the Weekly Wrap-Up is at risk.

You know the Progressive commercials where these adults start acting like their parents. Dr Rick helps them stop whatever they are doing that is making them look old. (Side note: There really is no issue about buying a shirt you already have. It’s a good shirt and it’s going to wear out soon so why shouldn’t I buy a backup when that one can’t be worn anymore?) In one commercial Dr Rick explains that you don’t need to print the internet. Well, I get a phone call from my sister who has our dad in the car. She explains that dad wants me to send him some of my articles. I explain he can just read them on the internet. Well, dad doesn’t like computers. I explain he can just follow the site and an email of each article will be sent to him. Well, dad doesn’t have email. The solution, per my dad, is for me to “just print the website”. I wondered awhile back about what would cause me to stop updating the website and that folks would be the primary reason.

Also, part of the phone call, I got an update on my niece who is a freshman on her high school volleyball team. Tall lefty right side player who has just started with the sport. She goes to a very small high school and is now running a 5-1 and has been named co-captain. All very cool. My sis told me that three seniors left the team this week because their playing time has been reduced and they felt they should have been captains over a freshman. I had warned my sis that she needed to be prepared for the insanity of volleyball politics when it comes to club and high school. We definitely had a ton of drama when it came to club and high school volleyball. Parents, as a general rule, are stupid when it comes to their kids. I was no different and I could be worse at times because I knew the sport.

Me – “What do you mean my daughter is not allowed to dig a ball that she can get?”

Coach – “The defense the club plays mean everyone has an area of responsibility and you must stay in your area.”

Me – “But the other kid wasn’t going to get the ball.”

Coach – “Yes. But it was her ball.”

Me to my daughter later in the day after a ball dropped that she could have gotten – “Just dig everything you can. Don’t tell your coach I said to do that.”

Me to the Coach a few weeks later – “So explain this defense to me again.”

Coach to me – “Yes, I’m aware you told your daughter to dig anything she can get to.”

Me – “Well, we’ve been playing better.”

See, I’m stupid!

I went back and looked at the box score of the Chicago/Calvin match. It went 5-sets with Chicago taking the last two. It was also played at Chicago. Oh, the final set went 17-15. Chicago had 5 players with double-digit points and two had 19 each. As a team, they had 91 Points while Calvin had only 63. Calvin just had two blocks in the match and seemed to struggle a bit in the service receive. A long way around to say that Calvin probably isn’t up to normal Calvin standards. Chicago is a good team but they have 5 losses. I don’t have them in my Top 25 because of this but we might be able to say we can put a blanket around teams like Calvin, Hope, Aurora, Chicago, Whitworth, Transylvania, Otterbein and a few more. The weird thing is that some will be in the Top 10 and some won’t be ranked.

The coach’s ballots came out for the Top 25. The link was wrong on Tuesday. I stepped through what I could to see if I could find a really strange ballot and didn’t see one. Normally, I can always find an interesting one but not this time. I was both impressed and disappointed.

In an email with “SoCal” he mentioned that he looks at service and service receive when judging the quality of a team. (That was really bad paraphrasing.) I will say that I agree. I need to see the hitters but I need to see a team that stays in system while forcing the opposition out of system. If you played Occidental and CMS and CMS was forced to always be out of system and Oxy was always in system, I’d expect to see an upset. (Not picking on Oxy. Love you Oxy. I just needed a team to compare against CMS in this manner.) That might seem obvious or maybe not if you think the block and defense of CMS would handle the match. The point is that the best team can be taken down with a below average service receive. From the data “SoCal” sent me, the average reception error per set for my Top 25 was 1.36. I looked at my Southwestern squad and their number is 1.64. Not good. The worst team in the Top 25 was Otterbein at 1.75! Northwestern was the best at 0.73. They were the only squad under 1.00. The Southwestern Aces/Set was also under the Top 25 average so maybe a clue on what is happening to my Pirates? We are out of system too much and not putting enough pressure on the opposition.

So “Ned” does a calculation that mimics what the NCAA uses in their selection criteria for strength of schedule (SOS). I love it when he sends this to me. He hasn’t sent it to me. He did, however, post a comment where he put his QWI data on Volleytalk, which is a volleyball forum. The table includes SOS for each of the teams in the AVCA Top 25 and the teams receiving votes. One thing to remember about SOS is that you really want to be at 0.600 or above. The west is at a real disadvantage in constructing a high SOS because we are an isolated region that requires flights to expand our list of opponents. If your SOS is under 0.550 then you are probably not going to get an at-large bid. Some interesting numbers form the chart:

• CMS 0.706 SOS

• Trinity 0.697

• Northwestern 0.591

• Berry 0.580

• Otterbein 0.543 (Uh oh)

• UW-Whitewater 0.533

• Wesleyan 0.541 (Southwestern is not helping them right now)

• Albion 0.562

• MIT 0.527 (eyeroll)

• Augsburg 0.523 (Southwestern is not helping them right now)

• Birmingham-Southern 0.537

• Tufts 0.690 (!)

Remember that as we move into conference play, the teams being played will all push back to 0.500 because half the teams will win in conference and the other half will lose.

Back to the East/West Challenge and why do I think we need to push for more of these types of tournaments. Eight teams went and 6 of them have SOS numbers at or over 0.614. The other two teams are not listed in the chart (Cal Lu and UT-Dallas). These tournaments, regardless of how you do, will greatly aid your SOS.

Alright, I wrote this because I have to do the schedules for Friday, Saturday and Sunday and I didn’t want to do it. Ugh. It’s either I do that, I guess, or start printing the website.