Weekly Wrap-Up

Time for our Weekly Wrap-Up! This week had fewer matches than past weeks so maybe I’ll need to vamp a bit to keep this interesting. As always, here is what you may have missed this past week. The week started with the D3VbWest Top 25, which included a new (unofficial) West Regional Ranking. I also had a note about changes to the ASC Tournament and an early look at Hitting Percentage. The AVCA Top 25 came out the next day and I basically went slightly crazy seeing Babson with two first place votes. The consolidated Players of the Week came out Wednesday followed the next day by my first attempt at naming the NCAA Tournament Field of 64. If you need some audio in your life and you’re looking for the next Beyonce then check out the Podcast Page as I did drop two new shows this week. Prior to posting this article I did update the Watch List where I’ve added the black cats of the West Region to the list.

Let’s start with the independents today and a quick look at Mills College and UC Santa Cruz. Mills College didn’t play. UC Santa Cruz played an exhibition. Boy, that was quick. These two teams will actually play this week for what it’s worth. I did want to encourage the Santa Cruz fans to read the Tournament of 64 article because I did spend some time on the one Pool B bid that will be given out to the top independent team in the nation.

Did you know that a few teams in the ASC are almost halfway through with their conference season? Weird but true. We’re missing an important match in Concordia/UMHB but that will happen on Friday. Right now, these two teams are tied for the West Division lead. We also haven’t had UT-Dallas (East Division leader) play either of these teams as all three are still undefeated in conference. With the ASC change to their tournament rules, right now we know that UT-Dallas and ETBU would represent the East Division with UMHB and Concordia representing the West. LeTourneau (tied with ETBU but with a head-to-head loss) is positioned for the first wildcard with Belhaven taking the second wildcard. The preseason favorites were probably McMurry and HSU for these spots but they are each 1-4 right now. Now, the quality of teams played is different for each of these teams but there were some interesting results that kind of show this is going to be a quite a fight the rest of the way. A non-conference match-up between Concordia and Southwestern led off the week with Concordia winning in 4-sets. Southwestern’s Elle McGown would get 21 kills hitting 0.432 but she was evened out by Concordia’s Tristyn Massey with her 19 kills and 21.5 points. The service and blocking game by Concordia was probably the difference in this one. On the same day, we had the battle of Abilene as HSU and McMurry faced off with HSU coming away with a 4-set victory. HSU would have three players with double-digit kills helped out by setter Ashley Pierce with 43 assists. Over the weekend, McMurry would get their first win in conference with a 5-set victory over LeTourneau. Their blocking led the way with Megan Martinez getting 4.5 blocks in addition to 8 kills on 0.467 hitting. The next day LeTourneau would surprise HSU with a sweep that wasn’t really competitive as the Cowgirls just made too many mistakes. LETU was led by Kianna Crow with 9 kills and the efficient Natalie Connelly (7 kills hitting 0.600). These two matches really show that LeTouneau is not going away this season. It was a tough weekend as HSU would also get swept by UT-Dallas. The next day UT-Dallas would beat McMurry in 4-sets getting 12 kills and 16 points from Jillian Via.

In the NWC, Whitworth finished off Pacific in 4-sets which gives them victories over the next three teams in conference play and leave them as the only undefeated team. Statistically, this was a match Pacific should have won but their 31 attack errors were too much to overcome. Whitworth really leaned on Emiko Kahler (again) but I’ll give some love to Abby Wolverton and her 9 kills and 11 points. There really were no upsets in conference this week but the Puget Sound/Lewis & Clark match was a fun one as the Loggers won in 5-sets. The Loggers were led by Sarah Blumenfeld who had 43 assists, 4 aces and 3 kills. Jordan Holman also contributed 18 kills and 23 points. Lewis & Clark had Kendall Malone go off for 26 kills in this one. After Whitworth, Pacific, PLU and Puget Sound are tied for second with 3-1 records. Lewis & Clark and Willamette are 2-2 and they are followed by the rest of the conference. Looking forward, Pacific gets the “Sound” treatment as they play both Pacific Lutheran and Puget Sound this weekend. This should tell us where the Boxers stand and whether they will challenge Whitworth for the NWC title.

It was a really light week for the SCAC. I’ve talked about the Southwestern/Concordia match above and other than that we had a couple of Trinity conference matches, which they won, and JWU playing in the Nebraska Wesleyan Tournament. We also saw LeTourneau play Dallas which ended with a LeTouneau reverse sweep. Kianna Crow led LETU with 26 kills and 28.5 points. Dallas had 20 kills from Abigail Porras and 19 kills from Dayjah Whyte. JWU got to play some good teams in UW-Platteville, Central and host Nebraska Wesleyan and unfortunately didn’t come away with even a set win. With that said, I believe these kind of tournaments help young teams come together and will prove valuable in seasons to come. With the conference wins this week, Trinity moves into the lead with a 5-0 record followed by Colorado College at 4-0. Southwestern is 3-1 and in fourth it’s Austin College at 3-2. Like last year, there will be 4 teams fighting for the last 3 conference tournament spots with ineligible St. Thomas likely causing havoc along the way.

Over in the SCIAC it does appear that CMS will be the team to beat in conference. They co-lead with Chapman as the two only undefeated teams. La Verne is a surprise (to me) third place team with Cal Lutheran and Whittier tied for fourth. Redlands and Occidental are both looking for their first conference win. This past week we saw CMS take down La Verne at home in 4-sets. I got to watch this one and Melanie Moore just brought it all in this one. She led the team in kills with 13 and points with 16.5 not to mention the unofficial lead in celebrations. She and fellow middle Regan Dinovitz really couldn’t be stopped in this one. Another one I watched during the week was Chapman and Pomona-Pitzer. This was just a slugfest as Chapman’s Jessi Lumsden, Sophie Srivastava and Mavis Lui had a “who can hit the ball the hardest competition” with Pomona-Pitzer’s The Hyphen (Addo-Ashong), Isabel Kelly and Naomi Chen-Mallouk. Sophie would get another triple-double in this one as the last kill in the match was her 10^th.  Over the weekend we saw how Caltech was just a team you can’t ignore this season as they dropped a 4-set match against Pomona-Pitzer but came back to beat Occidental the next day. CMS did beat Cal Lutheran in 4-sets away, which really sets up their match with Chapman on Tuesday. The big match on Saturday was the La Verne 4-set victory over Cal Lutheran as Haley Celaya submitted her name for SCIAC honors with 20 kills on 0.378 hitting. Of course setter Madison Maynes was like hold my Gatorade as she finished with 40 assists and 20 digs.

Overall in the West Region, it’s kind of messy. Colorado College, Chapman and CMS all have the least number of losses with 2 and things get murky the further we move down my unofficial Regional Rankings. La Verne is trying to insert themselves while Cal Lutheran suffered some down periods this week that are going to hurt them. Concordia will try to get in my rankings with their win over Southwestern, which really wasted a great opportunity to lock down a top 8 or 9 spot. Right now it looks like the ASC has a decent shot to get 2 teams into the NCAA Tournament and, without looking, was the last time this happened before the Texas teams were moved into the West Region? Whitworth could run off and hide in the NWC while Trinity and Colorado College look to square off again for the title in the SCAC. Outside of CMS in the SCIAC, will Chapman have enough to dominate and secure second place (or better)? Or will the other 5 teams with a chance just beat each other up and drag everyone’s record down?

Nationally, if you read my rant on the voters that had Babson in first place in the AVCA Poll then you might think I really do hate the New England Region. I don’t but I did take some enjoyment on their week. Tufts does seem to be the class of the region as they are now 12-0 with wins over JWU (RI), Wesleyan, Wellesley and Bowdoin. Those were probably the preseason toughest teams in that region outside of Babson. Babson, of course, with the two first place votes lost to unranked Emerson this week. To top it off, Wesleyan also lost to Mid-Atlantic Susquehanna. It does make you wonder about JWU (RI) and it shows you what can happen to a team if they don’t play a strong schedule and then have trouble inside the region or if the region proves to be not that tough. Now I think there are enough New England apologists that it may not matter too much. The end result may be 7 New England teams in the Top 25 rather than someone thinking, “Well, Tufts is their best team and they haven’t really played anyone outside the region. Teams that have played outside the region against quality opponents have lost and other top teams in the region are losing to unranked teams in the region. Maybe the region isn’t that deep or good?”

Here’s the thing, I don’t know. There simply are not enough data points to know. But, I choose to look harshly at teams (regardless of the region) that don’t give me the data points rather than reward them. That’s not New England hate, that’s just common sense.

NOTE – Those that follow the site know that around this time the last two years, I’ve been known to be near a beach. That trend will continue in the next week or so. That means I’ll do my best to keep things going at normal efficiency but if that doesn’t appear to be happening then just know I won’t be worrying about it too much.