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Weekly Wrap-Up (11/10/24)
It’s been a good run this season. A little burp in the middle due to a Punta Cana trip but, overall, I think the Wrap-Up gets a solid B- on the year. I would have loved that grade in high school. Yes, this will be your final Wrap-Up of the season. After this, we go back to the Musings articles and smaller updates. They are more fluid and are able to handle the insanity that is about to takeover our volleyball scene.
Taking a look at what was accomplished this week, we had our normal articles: NPI Rankings, D3VbWest Top 25, AVCA Top 25, Players of the Week and Region Leaders. The 2024 NPI Rankings were typically updated daily and we’ll do our best to continue this. Due to an accident at home, I was limited on my published articles. (Thanks for all of the people who reached out to wish my (hot) wife a speedy recovery. In summary, she fell and broke her face. She will recover.) Back to the extra articles and I did get another Regional Hosting article out (thanks to Ricky) and even published A Look at the At-Large Window. Use the links if you missed anything.
As to what is coming up this week, it’s the conference tournaments. I will cover them in the conference sections below but please note that I will not be doing Conference Tournament Pages this year. They were a lot of work and I’m not sure of their value. I will try to cover some of the information I put in those pages in this Wrap-Up.
Alright, time to clear out my notebook of things I wanted to talk about this week.
Occasionally, when Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (CMS) comes up in conversation with my (hot) wife she refers to them as the Mudders. I really like that nickname.
Ricky has a wonderful resource for all of the conference tournaments. You can find it here. It lists the #1 seed for each tournament and the dates. It also has a link to their tournament page. It will list the champions once they are crowned. Back in the day when I had to go through the selection process, I used this page a lot.
Kind of funny Chicago (60.348) plays Lake Forest (42.289) today. I can’t tell you how you better not lose this match.
Quiz: Without looking at the link I gave you above, what is the date our first conference tournament starts in DIII?
I wanted to look at the small margins for a couple of these teams that are currently the last teams out. As it stands, Otterbein (59.378) is the first team out that will definitely need an at-large bid. Their worst loss was to Muskingum (54.489). Switch that result and it moves them to 60.525. Southwestern is the next team out and sit at 59.329. Their worst loss was a 5-set match to Hardin-Simmons (54.722). If they had won that match, they would be at 60.553. Both teams would be in good shape for an at-large. It would be interesting to know how many teams currently out would be in with just one match having gone differently. I feel like this may have always been the case but with the old selection criteria it never felt this way.
I recently did a poll on Twitter that asked if you had to bet everything, would you take Juniata to win the DIII Championship or the field. Juniata won 57% to 43%.
Assuming Lake Forest doesn’t pull off the upset, here are probably your final top 5 NCAA Power Index (NPI) upsets of the year:
Without that Hamilton loss, Middlebury would be the first team out right now.
Your upsets from this past week greater than 6 NPI Points were:
Quiz Answer: November 6th (Wednesday). The NAC and United East had their first round last Wednesday. Weird. The NESCAC had their first round yesterday.
There are 5 conferences that will have their final on Sunday. Four of them could have an impact on the at-large bids.
There were 13 teams in all of DIII volleyball that played double-digit Quality Win Bonus (QWB) matches this season. Topping the list were Juniata and MIT at 16. How good were these teams? They each threw away 6 QWB matches. They did not count towards their NPI. Other double-digit QWB teams were Johns Hopkins, UW-Oshkosh, Emory, Hope, WashU, Millikin, Colby, UW-Whitewater, Chris Newport, NYU and Salisbury. There were 146 teams with at least one QWB win.
Teams that did not win a QWB match but would have given you a QWB if you beat them were Hartwick, Trine and Millsaps. Honestly, if you want to see teams that would be interesting to schedule, this is a great sort to use. Teams after these three are Misericodia, Mary Hardin-Baylor, Bethel and Lancaster Bible. Beating Lancaster Bible would have netted you around 65 NPI for the match.
Top 3 teams that had the toughest overall schedule according to NPI were Carnegie Mellon (58.75), NYU (58.60) and Chris Newport (58.06). Easiest schedule was VTSU-Johnson at 39.47. They went 8-13.
Worst Strength of Schedule (SOS) within the at-large window belongs to Whitworth at 0.521. Sitting just outside the window with the lowest would be Gallaudet at 0.522.
I wanted to throw some likely projections into this Wrap-Up but I wanted to use some input from Ned. He happens to be playing with his granddaughter right now and can’t get to it. What a jerk. LOL. Look for a separate article on this, which is probably for the best.
I find it interesting how the last team in and last team out have changed but only slightly. We are not seeing 5 teams jumping in and 5 going out each day. The numbers have become pretty static. Yes, we’ve seen some teams drop a match or two and take a big hit but it’s rare. I wonder if this will change the philosophy of the big out-of-conference match/tournament at the end of the season? I mean, you just don’t know if you need the win or not and whether the loss is worth the risk.
We probably need to look at Hitting Percentage nationally. Remember that the only common statistic between every national champion (that I’ve tracked) is that you had to be in the Top 11 in this category.
Only 5 of the Top 8 are here. No Washington & Lee (16), Emory (18) or Colby (74!). UW-Oshkosh is 39th, by the way.
One of the saddest things regarding this website will happen on Sunday. I normally go through the selection process for at-large teams. I conclude with my choices. That effort (which took most of the day) will not be needed this season as it is replaced by NPI. Of course, this has often prevented me from going to a regional so maybe that changes. Looks like a trip up to Sherman on Friday?
Since I will not be doing conference tournament previews, let’s go through some of that information here.
ASC
# – Ineligible for ASC and NCAA Championships (NCAA Division II reclassifying)
Their tournament will be hosted by ETBU on Friday and Saturday. LeTourneau will play Howard Payne in the 4/5 match. The winner gets the hosts. Hardin-Simmons will play Mary Hardin-Balor in the other semi-final match. I don’t really see ETBU losing this tournament but I think it’s a toss-up on whether HSU or UMHB makes the final (give me HSU). You know, UMHB didn’t play this past week so 2-weeks off before this tournament. Does that help or hurt? Just to make 99% of the readers mad, I guess I can make my pick for some of the conference awards. I think Graycee Mosley (ETBU) wins Player of the Year and Morgan Nix gets Libero of the Year. They have dominated the weekly awards and I think are slam dunks here. I gave the SCIAC a hard time about never giving an award to a setter but the ASC did the same thing this year. I think that award comes down to Lexi Moody (ETBU) or Kendall Harrington (UMHB). I think Harrington gets the nod.
C2C
The C2C doesn’t play a normal conference season and take the top 4 teams based on NPI. For this season it will be the top 4 listed in the standings page and they will play at Chris Newport on Friday and Saturday. I think Salisbury is the class and will win their tournament. UC Santa Cruz beat Chris Newport twice this year but I think they fall short in the semi-final this year simply because CNU is hosting. For their awards, I don’t care. None will go to UC Santa Cruz just like they never gave them an award during the week.
NWC
Whitworth will be hosting this tournament that takes the top 4 teams on Friday and Saturday. I think all three matches should be pretty close. Give me Whitworth and PLU to meet in the final and for Whitworth to win. They just played a 5-set match where Whitworth needed the reverse sweep so I’m not as confident here as you would maybe think. The NWC doesn’t do a Setter of the Year. It’s strange when conferences don’t give this award or do it for the weekly awards. For Player of the Year, I think it goes to Ella Jimenez (Whitworth). For Libero of the Year, I’m going Halle Hetzler. (Joke!) This may be one of the toughest calls of any of the awards across all conferences. I think it comes down to Danica Nelson (Pacific), Piper Harrop (George Fox) and Makenna Jackson (PLU). Because of team record, I think it will be between Harrop and Jackson and, honestly, I’d give it to both. There just isn’t much to split these two, but if I’m forced to pick one I’m going with Jackson just because of team success. (Note that Harrop won 3 PoW Awards while Jackson won 2.)
SCAC
Austin College will host the SCAC Tournament that will also play on Friday and Saturday. Love the neutral site for the top 2 teams in this one. I think Trinity’s play of late has been so much better than the start of the year and they take this tournament. The first quarter final match should be a great one. You have the hosts playing TLU and I could see AC winning this but TLU has been so strong of late that they get this win. Trinity will beat Schreiner because I’ve already spoiled that announcement. Colorado College should handle St Thomas but another chance for an upset here. Southwestern and McMurry just played a 5-set match and I think Southwestern repeats their success here. Trinity over TLU in a classic match and then Colorado College over Southwestern in the other. (NPI says SU wins this but they are just so hurt right now.) I think Trinity takes down CC in the final. For Player of the Year, I think it comes down to five players: Brylie Nedd (TLU), Maddie Fate (Trinity), Mackenzie Logan (Trinity), Carolyn Dormady (CC) and Camille Sherrill (CC). You know, I’m going to go with the player that probably won’t get it and that’s Maddie Fate. First in hitting percentage and 3rd in Blocks/Set. The outsides are all just so close that they split the vote. No wrong answer from this group. For Setter of the Year, I’m going with Annie Steger (CC). She’s the only one running a 5-1 so big advantage there. What really sells it, however, is that CC leads in team hitting percentage. Faith Coldewey (TLU) will probably win Backrow of the Year. Great choices here that include Kovacs (AC), Spice (St Thomas) and Nedrow (Southwestern).
SCIAC
The SCIAC takes the top 5 this season for the first time and the host is always the highest seed for each match. This tournament starts Tuesday with the 4/5 match at Pomona-Pitzer. I think PP wins this over Chapman. The semi-finals will be on Thursday where I think CMS gets some revenge on a recent loss at Pomona-Pitzer and La Verne takes down Whittier. The championship will be Saturday at CMS and give me La Verne. These two teams are really close and this match should be great. It really comes down to the La Verne hitters not named Mya Ray and how much they contribute. CMS is better as a team hitting (0.259 to 0.230) but lack a hitter that can take control like Ray can. CMS wins with smart hitting and outstanding defense. La Verne wins if they get a second or third hitter getting to double-digits in kills and Ray being Ray. Offensive Player of the Year is between Georgia McGovern (CMS) and Mya Ray (La Verne). I don’t think the SCIAC knows how to value a setter with respect to the word “Offensive” (team hitting percentage is one way) so I think Mya Ray wins the award. I’d probably split it and I think that’s fair. Do you take the best hitter or do you take the setter that led the best team offense? Defensive Player of the Year goes to Dede Carranza (CMS).
One final point I will make on the award winners is that it’s done on conference stats. I was looking at overall stats so there can be a difference there.
That should do it. Off to the conference tournaments and then the regionals and then the championship. More fun upcoming!
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