Weekly Wrap-Up

Here is the Weekly Wrap-Up where we take a look at what the heck just occurred over the past week in the West Region. As a reminder, in my last wrap-up I created a two-part series on the state of the 4 conferences in the West Region as well as a look at the independent team race for the single Pool B bid. I had my Top 25, which included an updated look at the West Region Rankings. One note for this week is that I will be doing a separate post on the West Region Rankings because things get real with the first public release of the rankings on the 23^rd. In fact, I’ll be doing two posts on the regional rankings. One on what the West RAC should do and one post on what the heck did they just do. The second post will include a look around the nation, as well. I did drop a podcast on what teams around the nation should be on the regional rankings this week. The AVCA Top 25 came out on Tuesday and we had a consolidated list of the players of the week on Wednesday. I have updated the Watch List and will need to update it again once the Chapman match today is complete and the SOS numbers come out Monday. The rest of the time it was about the matches so let’s take a look at those results now.

This past week in the ASC we saw UT-Dallas clinch another East Division title so they will now host the ASC Tournament. We also saw LeTourneau exceed their biggest win total in the history of their program. We also saw the showdown between the two top teams in the ASC that, of course, went to 5-sets. Backing up a bit, the ASC had their two crossovers over the weekend hosted by Concordia and McMurry so we’ll look at some of the more important matches. Concordia held off LeTourneau in 4-sets. Both of these teams are sitting in the second position in their divisions. Kianna Crow (LETU) had 22 kills in a losing effort while Concordia was led by Sarah Ghormley who had 17 kills and 19 points. In the big showdown, UT-Dallas jumped on UMHB going up 2-0 before UMHB stormed back with the reverse sweep. UT-Dallas would have 4 players with double-digit kills but UMHB proved too strong behind the play of Jenna Gillean who had 11 kills and a match leading 25 digs. The box score had service receptions listed, which I love. You can tell that UMHB went at Catherine Croft while UTD went after Gillean. Both were attempts to tire out the big hitters from each team. The story in this one was really the UTD attacking errors as they were better in almost every other facet of the game. LeTourneau would get their record (with more to come) against Howard Payne in a sweep. Kianna Crow gets too much love from me so I’ll mention Natalie Connelly who had 11 kills with only 1 error in this one. Hardin-Simmons had a nice weekend securing their lead for the first wildcard position. They took down ETBU in a sweep getting 11 kills from Triniti Anderson. Ashley Pierce led the attack with 34 assists. UT-Dallas would secure the division title with wins over Concordia and Howard Payne. The Concordia match was interesting because it was a pretty dominate sweep. In the final match of the weekend, McMurry swept ETBU to really put a hurt on their chances for that second wildcard, which is currently held by McMurry. ETBU was held to 0.000 hitting in this one.

Looking at the standings it seems clear that UT-Dallas and UMHB will claim the top spots in their division. LeTourneau and Concordia seem to have the second spots wrapped up but LETU will need to beat Louisiana College to secure it as I don’t see them beating UTD. The wildcard is between HSU, McMurry and ETBU. I think ETBU can get to 7-7 in conference, which means McMurry will need to win 2 of their last 4 matches. HSU just needs one more win. So, steep odds for ETBU but we’ll just have to wait and see how it plays out.

Over in the NWC it was all about Whitworth and getting their Christmas List checked off. Beat Pacific Lutheran. Check. Beat Puget Sound. Check. Have Pacific lose. Check. The Pirates sit on top of the standings one match ahead of Pacific with the head-to-head tiebreaker in hand. In theory, we could have our first NCAA Tournament team this Saturday as Pacific hosts Whitworth. A Pacific loss puts them 2 matches behind and really 3 with the tiebreaker. There are enough matches left for things to change but it won’t be very realistic as Whitworth has already played the top teams a second time. Remember this is the only conference in the nation that doesn’t hold a tournament so the regular season winner gets the Pool A bid. The Pacific Lutheran and Puget Sound losses take them back to 6-4 and out of the running for the title. I don’t see either team getting an at-large bid and if that is true it ends a nice little run by the Lutes. On the flip side, it shows a really young Logger team how much work is needed as they push their program ahead in the future. George Fox sits at 5-5 and have won 4 straight as they have played the spoiler role these past two weeks. Willamette is also at 5-5 while Lewis & Clark has lost 5 straight to fall to 3-7. Whitman now has a couple of conference wins as they continue to surprise me with their quick growth. Linfield sits at the bottom but they have a couple of winnable matches on the schedule.

As far as the matches this past week, there was the pretty dominate Whitworth sweep of Pacific Lutheran. The Pirates were led by, who else, Emiko Kahler who had 20 kills. Not sure there is any doubt that she’s the MVP of the conference this year. We also had the George Fox upset of Pacific away in 4-sets. Paige O’Rear led GFU with 16 kills and 20.5 points. Laney Search quarterbacked the attack with 35 assists. Maybe the most surprising result of the year was Whitman with the sweep of Puget Sound at home. The Loggers hit -0.071 and were just never in this one. Whitman was a blocking machine as they had 9 solos and 9 block assists! I’m sure those players got all of the love in Whitman so I’ll give a shout out to libero Claire McCarthy who finished with 16 digs in the 3 sets. On Saturday, Whitworth was able to beat a resurgent Puget Sound team in 5-sets in a really close match. The Pirates hit 0.276 and had 4 players with double-digit kills (and yes, Kahler led both teams with 23…yawn).

Shifting to the SCAC and they were playing their divisional matches at Trinity and Dallas. I was able to catch three of the Southwestern matches at Dallas but between wedding stuff and house repair issues I was driving back and forth. I was really impressed with Colorado College and you have to remember they are down two starters right now. I will kind of throw out digs on Coach Swan about his yellow card accumulation and sure enough there was a yellow card given to Colorado College in the Southwestern match. Afterwards, he made sure to tell me that the yellow card wasn’t his. LOL. I told him he needed to throw more clipboards but he said he already broke them all. I’ve written a lot about Colorado College Lizzy Counts over the years. She can be really annoying but you just have to appreciate her play on the court. She is definitely one of the more competitive players I’ve ever seen at any level. I think Colorado College has a shot at the national championship this year but I do think they need Spaethling back and at full speed. Their two middles are really good but Margo is a game changer. I heard she’s maybe a week away from playing. As for the SCAC matches there was an interesting one with Southwestern and Dallas. Playing at home there was a moment where I thought Dallas was going to pull off an upset but the serving of Elle McGown coupled with the hitting of Emma White (15 kills) in one rotation was the difference. It also helped to get a triple-double from Lauren Crabtree (15 kills, 31 assists and 15 digs). In that Colorado College match with Southwestern, in addition to Counts (7 kills, 51 assists and 24 digs), it was Haley Harris with 17 kills that did the good guys in. The play of their libero (Anna Guroinick) was already really good. St. Thomas (Tx) surprised Austin College with a sweep as they continue to muck up the SCAC standings. Alyssa Ajlouny had 12 kills and 15.5 points in this one. Kaylyn Latin had 30 digs! Remember this was in 3 sets! Maybe the biggest match as far as the 6^th tournament spot in the SCAC goes was the Centenary/Dallas match. Senior night for Dallas as they had to win the last two sets to take the win. Larissa Ramirez had 55 assists in this one and Dayjah Whyte had 21 kills.

The standings are pretty clear at this point at the top. You have Colorado College and then Trinity. The rest is murky with Southwestern in third 1 ½ matches ahead of Austin College who is one match up on both TLU and Dallas. Centenary is a half match back and sitting outside of the tournament as the SCAC takes only 6 teams. The last weekend of play is this Saturday and Sunday at Austin College where we’ll get treated to another Colorado College/Trinity match as well as another Trinity/Southwestern match. We should also watch St. Thomas because although their matches don’t count in DIII this year, the SCAC is counting them towards conference. They get Southwestern (who they already beat), Colorado College and Dallas this weekend and I’m sure they would love to play the spoiler for at least one of those teams.

The SCIAC kicked off their second half of conference with a few important matches. We saw matches on Tuesday go against the two teams trying to sneak into the SCIAC Tournament spots (they only take four) as Whittier lost to Redlands and Pomona-Pitzer lost to Caltech both in 5-sets. Redlands had 4 players with double-digit kills but the defense was anchored by libero Ally Busch who had 36 digs. Caltech had to win the last 2 sets for the win and were led Hannah Fan who had 20 kills and 23 points. On that same day, we saw CMS almost drop a match to Cal Lutheran after taking a 2-0 lead. Phoebe Madsen would get a triple-double in this one (11 kills, 35 assists and 16 digs) but it was Amanda Walker with 23 kills that would let this one slide away. Friday saw Cal Lutheran bounce back against La Verne and take an important result both in the conference as well as in the region. Cal Lu was led by Sarah Hein who had 18 kills while Jennifer Kent had 42 assists. La Verne would take it on the chin again with a 5-set loss at home against Whittier. Katelyn Popoff would have 19 kills in this one along with Franki Piloto and her 11 kills. The big SCIAC match of the week, however, was the rematch between Chapman and CMS. This would end in a dominating CMS sweep. It appears that CMS has got the services of their starting lineup back as both outsides were playing this week. As a team they hit 0.263 while holding Chapman to 0.067. CMS would also have 13 service aces in the match with outside Lucila Grinspan getting 5 to go along with her 8 kills.

The results this week put the top spot in the SCIAC in limbo but CMS does hold the tiebreaker. Their best chance for a loss may be that final match of the regular season away at La Verne. Chapman’s schedule is a little tougher but as I mentioned in the Watch List, they really can’t afford another loss as they put themselves in position for an at-large spot. Both Cal Lutheran and La Verne are tied for third at 6-4 with Pomona-Pitzer 2 matches back at 4-6. I think with the schedule in front of them it’s going to be tough to make up that ground but a couple of upsets will change that thinking. Remember that the SCIAC only takes 4 teams to their tournament. Caltech, Whittier and Redlands are all at 4-7 with Occidental winless in the conference. That Whittier loss to Redlands really stings now after they were able to beat La Verne.

As for the independents Mills College is almost done with their season. UC Santa Cruz has a really outside chance at a Pool B bid and probably need a victory today against Chapman to have any kind of shot. Check the Match Day report for the status of that match (the only one in the West Region today).

We’re almost done folks!?! Went by quick, right? Just two more weekends until conference tournaments and then disappointment for most teams. Regional rankings come out this week and you have to remember it’s only based on 4 of the 5 selection criteria. I’ll try to anticipate the 5^th criterion (Ranked Wins) later this week to get an early picture of it. I hope to drop more national podcasts on the regional rankings, too.