Weekly Wrap-Up

Things are becoming clearer in the West Region at the same time things are becoming murkier. In the ASC, UMHB and UT-Dallas will win their divisions and the ASC Tournament will be held at UMHB. In the East Division ETBU will claim the second spot and LeTourneau will get the third and final spot in that division. In the West Division, Concordia and McMurry will qualify although he final seeding has yet to be determined. Over in the NWC, Whitworth has command of the conference and their Pool A bid but both Pacific Lutheran and Puget Sound still have a chance. Pacific will need a lot of help but are still mathematically in the race. In the SCAC, Trinity still has the lead and it’s really just down to them and Colorado College. Their rematch is this coming weekend but really nothing will be decided until their probable third meeting at the SCAC championship match. Still a number of matches to be played but right now but TLU is on the outside of the 6-team SCAC Tournament. In the SCIAC, CMS was tripped up this week but still hold a commanding 2 match lead in conference. Last week it looked like Cal Lutheran was done and this week they may be the favorite to finish 2^nd in conference. La Verne is the team on the outs this week but really there are 6 teams fighting for the 4 conference tournament spots and don’t bother applying unless you end the season with 9 conference wins.

As for my week on the site, things are back to being crystal clear as I actually got a wrap-up done on time! In fact, the wrap-up included looks at each of the conferences at the mid-point in the season. Always fun to look back and see how just one week invalidates everything I wrote just 7 days ago. The D3VbWest Top 25 came out on Monday and the West Region RAC Ranking predictions came out the next day. The AVCA Top 25 came out on Tuesday and I used some extra time during the week to come up with another look at the NCAA Field of 64. Based on this work I developed two additional posts that centered on the selection criteria – one that looked at the average at-large team from last year and one that looked at the priority order of the criteria. Looking ahead, the big news is that we’ll get to see the first public release of the West RAC rankings and the teams the region is going to put forth for at-large bids.

Looking back on the ASC, it started with both UMHB and UT-Tyler winning matches during the week. UMHB win over McMurry was just another statement win for the Cru as they look to roll to a Pool A bid this season. Hope Hoelscher was the hitting star for UMHB as she finished with 10 kills and a hitting percentage of 0.562. The weekend brought us the last two crossovers hosted by UT-Tyler and UT-Dallas. UT-Tyler, playing for nothing but pride as they make their DIII exit, sent everyone home disappointed. This included a win over UMHB as the Patriots still haven’t lost to an ASC team this season. The Patriots were led by setter Reighanna Guzman who had 61 assists, 7 kills and 14 digs in the 4-set match. UT-Dallas nailed down the East Division with three wins; their biggest being their sweep of McMurry. Dylan Brinkman, who has struggled a bit this season trying to get her legs under her after being out all last year, led the Comets with 13.5 points in this match-up. Sul Ross State keeps getting wins in the ASC as they went 2-1 on the weekend and probably would have been the third place team in the East Division if things were different location wise. Their 5-set win over Louisiana College saw Annika Canaba get a triple-double with 23 kills, 22 assists and 10 digs. LeTourneau had a weekend to forget as they went 0-3 and have now lost 6 straight.

Looking back at the NWC and it’s all about the top four teams right now. Pacific kept their hopes alive with wins over George Fox and Pacific Lutheran. The win over the Lutes saw a standout performance by Boxers’ Milana Ivkovic who had 17 kills and a 0.625 hitting percentage while ending with 20.5 points. Puget Sound looked to be rolling but got tripped up by George Fox on the road. Bruins’ Danyle Dupray was the hero as she finished with 15 kills and 13 digs as she eclipsed 1000 digs for her career during the match. Pacific Lutheran was able to beat Linfield on the road but, as mentioned before, dropped the Pacific match. They will need to beat Whitworth at home in 2 weeks in a sweep and hope Puget Sound finishes above Pacific. Failing all of that, they’ll need Whitworth to drop another match along the way. Speaking of Whitworth, they just keep cruising along as they took down Willamette and Lewis & Clark both on the road. Whitworth was lead (as they have been all season) by Jessica Schmautz who had 21 kills and 17 digs in the Willamette match. One of the better matches of the week was the Willamette win against Whitman that went 5-sets. Willamette pulled out the 5^th set 18-16 despite a monster match by Whitman’s Kalli Dickey who led both teams with 23.5 points.

Looking back at the SCAC and we had Trinity and Schreiner playing matches at TLU. Trinity was able to maintain their slim one match lead in conference with two wins over the weekend. The TLU match was actually really close despite it being a sweep as all three sets were won by 2 points with the last two sets going past 25. Madeline McKay continues her impressive season as she finished with 15.5 points in this match. The rest of the teams were in Colorado College where the Tigers don’t lose. Well, I guess no one told Austin College as they almost pulled off the impossible. After a sub-par performance against JWU where they still got the win, they jumped all over the Tigers to lead the match 2-0. The ‘Roos were helped by 19 attack errors by the Tigers in the first two sets. After Colorado College won the third set big, setter Lizzy Counts was pulled for the rest of the match. She didn’t play the next day so it must be an injury but holy cow the ‘Roos had this, right? Well, the Tigers steamrolled the ‘Roos 25-6 in the fourth set behind setter Isabelle A-Menzel and looked to have the 5^th set well in hand. Austin College came back late and actually had a match point before Colorado College rolled off the points needed to win 17-15. Margo Spaethling ended the match with 18 kills and 20.5 points to lead the Tigers. Speaking of JWU earlier, they didn’t come away with a win but they were a tough out all weekend only getting swept by Southwestern. They forced Centenary to 5-sets before falling. Centenary was led by setter Rachel Demerjian as she recorded 55 assists to break the Centenary DIII match record. The final match of the weekend saw Austin College taking on Southwestern for the first time of the year. Southwestern would win the match in 4-sets and take control of the third spot in the SCAC. The Pirates were led by Ashley Whitlock’s 16 kills and 19.5 points.

Looking back at the SCIAC as they continued their conference play. As mentioned at the top of this post, the week belonged to Cal Lutheran as they swept La Verne, beat CMS in 5-sets and took down Redlands earlier today. The Regals were led by freshman Maci Haddad who had 14 kills and 20 points in the CMS match. Chapman would go 2-1 on the week but were tripped up by Redlands behind the defensive effort of Ally Busch and her 29 digs. She was also 3 for 3 in kills, which is always nice for the defensive players. CMS did manage to hang on to first place in conference with wins over Pomona-Pitzer and La Verne while Whittier did what they needed beating Caltech and Occidental. Pomona-Pitzer is still hanging on in the conference race as they beat both Redlands and Caltech in 5-set matches. Isabel Kelly led the Sagehens in the Redlands match with 14 kills and 16.5 points. I guess it’s not a week in the SCIAC without Chapman’s Sophie Srivastava getting another triple-double (in the losing effort against Redlands). Even when losing CMS still seems to do something special as Phoebe Madsen had 61 assists in the 5-set match against Cal Lutheran.

Mills College was off this week and UC Santa Cruz headed to Saint Paul to play in the St. Kate’s Invite. The Slugs came away winless but did take a set off three of their four opponents.

Looking towards this week, the ASC, the NWC and the SCIAC continue their normal conference play. The SCAC has divisional play at Trinity and Austin College. The real races are in the NWC and the SCIAC but this is the time of the year where a hot team can sneak into the NCAA Tournament. There really isn’t any more time to find yourself…it has to be now.