Weekend Wrap-Up

If you saw my little blurb in this post earlier then you know that I´m currently on vacation but will be back tomorrow. It´s been tough following the different games this week but, hey, I´m on vacation so no one really cares, right? Perhaps the toughest part of the week is writing this wrap-up because it´s on a Mexican keyboard and there are weird characters everywhere. In addition, every word I write is misspelled! Oh, and the apostrophe is messed up!

When I get back this week I plan on going through the Watch List to see if I can remove some teams. Linfield, I´m looking at you. Austin College, yeah you, too. But, we´ll see. I´m also thinking about going back through the predictions to see how bad I am now that we are a month into the season.

As always, let me start off with the ASC. It was a weird week because the top teams didn´t play after Tuesday. The marquee match this week was the Tuesday match between UTT at UTD. I really liked UTT at the start of the season but I really respect how the UTD team has rallied despite some major injuries prior to the season. UTD swept the Patriots which means the East Division has a three-way tie at the top between UTD, UTT and Belhaven (a DIII provisional team). Some general notes on the other teams…

Should be fun on the 14^th when new DIII member Louisiana College faces Sul Ross State. Neither team has a win in conference with LC still win-less on the year overall. UMHB is the class of the ASC but really haven´t played a tough schedule. They do get Trinity this week and again at the end of the season so this will help the West RAC with their rankings when the time comes. A lot of teams in this conference seem able to trip up other (better) teams but then get tripped up themselves against lesser opponents. It´s just really tough to figure this conference out right now other than UMHB.

There is a three-way tie at the top of the NW Conference between Pacific, Pac Lutheran and Whitworth. I currently have Pacific and Pac Lu on my Watch List but I truly think only Pac Lu has a chance at a Pool C bid if they don´t win their conference. This has shades of 2014 again when the NW Conference placed two in the tournament, which only means it will be tougher for the West RAC to get another team in. It´s still too early to worry about these things unless you are an obsessive small minded man that write a D3 West Volleyball Blog.

The big story from the NW is that Linfield dropped another match (against Pacific) and have really hurt their (slim) chances at a Pool C bid. The other big story is that Pac Lu was able to defeat Pacific and give them their first DIII loss of the season. The other big story (I know crazy, right?) is that Whitworth is now on a 5-match winning streak (all sweeps) and are making a play for the conference crown. Remember that the NW Conference does NOT play a tournament so season winner, wins!

It was crossover week for the SCAC which means we get our Colorado College matches against both Trinity and Southwestern. It would also give us some more insight into Austin College. Frankly the CC/Trinity match disappointed as CC won rather easily in three sets. I had really jumped on that Trinity Tiger bandwagon and this result surprised me. CC really has some strong pieces and if they stay in system they are hard to beat. Trinity found this out. The CC/SU match up was much better and even though CC won I came away more impressed with SU then I had been. They have made some positional changes to their hitters, which seem to be working a bit better. CC really did a great job fighting back a game down against SU and then being down big in set 5. One problem of late for SU has been the theme of giving up late leads. Fix this and watch out. With all of that said, CC has laid claim to the SCAC halfway through and, not to spoil anything, they will retain the #1 spot in my West Region Rankings tomorrow. As far as Austin College, they just can´t seem to get over the hump of the big three and they just got swept by TLU. Their Pool C bid chances rest on their play this week as they go against La Verne and Whittier and really need to win both. I warned people about TLU and my guess is I don´t have a lot of Roo followers?

OK, my wife wants to eat so I have to cut this short. The SCIAC is just a mess! I really think you´ve got three good teams (CMS, Chapman and La Verne), one pretty good team in Whittier, one use to be good and doesn´t know they´re not team in Cal Lu, and one team that no one wants at the party but they keep crashing and making a mess team in Pomona-Pitzer. Just fun volleyball out in SoCal with this group. I just think CMS will take the #1 seed in their tourney at the end of the year but unlike the beginning of the year, I don´t feel this with absolute confidence.

Forgive me for any misspellings!!!!