Weekly Wrap-Up (9/14/25)

Last week I mentioned that I fear the Weekly Wrap-Up that didn’t start until Sunday morning. Well, this one isn’t starting until almost noon. Last week I cranked out almost 5000 words. You will not need to carve out that much time for your evening reading. This is the wrap-up where you get the best of DIII volleyball. We look back, forward and sideways and try to have fun doing it. (I just got done and I got pretty close to 5000 again.)

Looking at the week that was, we had the NPI Rankingskicking us off. That was followed by our Top 25, which was followed by the AVCA Top 25. We had the Players of the Week article and the Region Leaders that now cover our six “West” conferences. The Region Leaders covers all of Region VI and X. Our bonus article for the week was Fun with Numbers. Of course, we also had the Match Day articles where I sometimes sneak in NPI updates. Check the links if you missed anything.

It should be noted that I haven’t been lazy this morning. The standings have been updated and I’ve made a first cut at my Top 25. I already have 2 new teams ready to go. I also have big decisions on two other teams. In my second cut, I’ll look at who else is deserving and see if they should bounce one of those two teams on the bubble. Just for the record, I also played some Mighty Party (my game of choice) and had two slices of sourdough bread with butter.

Looking at the week to come for our six conferences:

• ASC plays Tuesday and Friday

• C2C plays Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday

• NWC plays Wednesday, Friday and Saturday

• SAA plays Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday

• SCAC plays Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday

• SCIAC plays Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday

A little weird that the ASC doesn’t play on the weekend. They are down to just four teams and conference play has started so there is a reason. On the flip side, the C2C is going to kill me. The NWC is now doing their normal thing with conference play in full swing. The SAA has pod play this weekend so no Friday matches. In hindsight, the SCAC is going to kill me. I’ll take a Thursday match over Sunday matches.

Before I get to my notebook, let’s do some pre-notebook thoughts.

Congratulations SAA, this is what you signed up for by brining in Trinity and Southwestern. Saturday and Sunday pods. There is one at Oglethorpe (Atlanta) and one at Trinity (San Antonio). Four teams go to each location. Only two teams enjoy home court advantage while the rest play mostly in a neutral court setting. Now, this is how the SCAC use to do it all of the time. As a parent, I didn’t know any better, but I will say that it was great from the standpoint of watching matches. I didn’t have to miss much work and you got to see a bunch of games. From the standpoint of the students, I’m not sure it’s that great. (But college isn’t about the students.) They have to play 3 matches over 2-days and endure heavy travel schedules in some cases. I get that the Sunday matches reduce the impact of missing classes but it comes at the expense of the student-athlete’s mental health. There is no down time. This was all done because Trinity and Southwestern wanted to align with schools that were closer to them academically. Remember, I’m only looking at volleyball. This is being done across all sports so imagine how much the athletic budget had to increase to handle this travel. It’s going to be really interesting to see if this arrangement can last. I mean the Texas schools have options as do the original SAA schools. If those schools want the home/away scheduling they just have to switch conferences (again).

One more thing, the (hot) wife and I will be traveling for a bit as we typically do this time of year in celebration of our anniversary. I’ll try to keep a normal schedule of things. The item that normally loses out is the Weekly Wrap-Up so savior this one as it may have to last another week.

Maybe I will get to 5000 words.

Off to the notebook, which wasn’t that full this week.

Well, the streak is over. Juniata had won 103 straight matches, which is a DIII women’s volleyball record but was 6 short of the NCAA record held by Penn State. Well, the Nittany Lions can pour one out and toast the Eagles for coming close. Wittenberg was the team to stop the streak giving Juniata their first loss in 3-years. Quite a day yesterday with JC losing, Johns Hopkins losing two and Trinity losing two. That’s a rare if not unique occurrence. All joking aside, all the respect in the world to the Juniata players that contributed to the streak.

Maybe it’s the old man turning 60 in me but I HATE SERVICE ERRORS AFTER A TIMEOUT! Holy cow, people! What is the opposing team trying to do with that timeout? What is the one thing you don’t want to give them after the timeout? Put the ball in the court and see if the rattled team can put forth an attack. It’s really quite simple. No rule against serving underhand if you want. While I’m here, I just really hate the service error in general if the player doesn’t have a great serve. If you can’t put real pressure on the opposition then why are we giving them points for no reason? I do look at the ace to error ratio and hate to see more errors than aces. I also hate to see teams with the same type of serves throughout the team. As a bench player, how can you stand out and get more playing time? Develop a serve that puts pressure on the other team that is safe and different than your teammates. Shoutout to Jamison Duck who had a serve where she would stand as far a way from the net as legally possible and float it in. The extra distance made the ball move and it would slow down more as it got to the passer creating even more movement.

I was notified on Friday that Amherst had backed out of the NYU Tournament where they were to play the hosts, Chris Newport and Montclair State. I subsequently learned that a threat had been made against NYU, which was quickly determined to be fake. The tournament did go on without incident but Amherst, in an abundance of caution, decided not to play. I have no issue with what Amherst did or that the tournament went on and played. It’s just a sad situation that something like this has to be dealt with in anyway and that now, frankly, it’s considered normal. My hope is that everyone can just treat others with empathy and love and that they receive the same in return.

I did an early update of the NPI Rankings, by the way…Wow, did you feel that? That was everyone clicking the link and leaving the Wrap-Up.

We have one match today so I’ll update the rankings for their official update tomorrow. I guess it’s their unofficial official update since our numbers are always unofficial. There are 22 matches that are currently considered upsets. (An NPI upset is one where a team 5 NPI or more lower wins.) The largest upset before this week was Millikin over UW-Platteville. At one point it was a 10+ NPI point upset. It is now off the list with UWP faltering this past week. The new leader is, ugh, Pacific Lutheran over Southwestern. It’s an 11.595-point upset.

Bridgewater St is currently the lowest NPI team (50.05) that is projected to win their conference (MASCAC) right now.

As we close out week three of the season, I wanted to highlight an article I did this summer on NPI Rule of Thumbs. These are just some trends that we noticed involving NPI and how the season could play out. Worth revisiting.

Thanks to someone commenting on this. Congratulations to La Verne Jeff Hendershot on his 100-coaching win, which occurred against Oshkosh. Also, congratulations to Mya Ray who is now the all time kills leader in La Verne women’s volleyball history. She has a great chance to put that and other records out of reach. (Note to others, I always welcome Wrap-Up content. Please share.)

So, one of the strangest things is looking at Puget Sound’s Mark Massey coaching record and seeing something like 8 ties in his career record for volleyball. Well, it was déjà vu the other day when the UW-Superior/St Norbert match was recorded as a tie. It has since been fixed but it was really cool (to me) for a day.

My niece who is trying to find her perfect school to play volleyball was at Cal Lu yesterday watching their match against UC Santa Cruz. She texted me and I quote, “Do you know where I can see the results of the other games today?” Always good to be served up a plate of humble pie from time-to-time.

We had five schools join the NPI Rankings this week. These are teams that hadn’t played a DIII opponent.

I was also watching that CLU/UCSC match a bit. I will say that I didn’t expect a lot from Cal Lu to start the season but they are now 7-1 after sweeping the Slugs last night. Their schedule hasn’t been the strongest but you can only beat those put in front of you. So, let me send some love to Cal Lu:

• Kaylee Clayton leads the team in Points/Set.

• Kennedy Smith leads the team in Points, Kills and Hitting Percentage.

• Makenna Kawamura leads the team in assists but just 11 ahead of Kylee Grimm.

• Keegan Corley leads the team in Digs and Digs/Set.

This is a good team that is probably going to struggle against the top teams in conference but finishing high enough to be in the conference tournament is something I hadn’t expected. Now I do.

A team I thought would be good but not great at the start of the year was ETBU. It was because they lost a really good outside but they have done a great job replacing those stats and then having others step up to fill the void. They were going to be good because of Graycee Mosley but she can only do so much and she was already doing it. Anyway, this group just beat Trinity for the first time ever. I’m not writing this because Trinity is Southwestern’s biggest rival but because beating Trinity is a big deal for teams especially in Texas. That’s called respect. Once the match was over, I tweeted out that this was the first time ETBU had done this and I got some ETBU peeps liking it. Since I’m vain, let me return the love to Graycee Mosley, Callie Humphrey and assistant coach Allison Kuster. I even got a new follower in Zanetta Hancock who probably belongs to sudette Anita Hancock. My question to you is where have you been? She’s a junior! I really blame the Coach’s mom, Deborah. She should be telling everyone to follow the site. We once had a special relationship but I guess that has passed now.

I watched a bit of the matches down at St Thomas and they have an announcer (who’s name I forget) that always describes players from where they went to high school. He then will say that school’s mascot and even the team colors. This always cracks me up. I struggle remember anything and this guys is talking about Lily McWhorter went to Woodlands High School where she was a Highlander and wore the red and green.

This is the time where I focus on the conferences and highlight results but I’m going in a different direction this week. I am going to just touch on each conference briefly before going through a number of conferences nationally as I look at how strong their NPI numbers are. Remember that conference play will typically start up this week and out-of-conference matches are rarer. That means, the numbers that the conference has put up will be pretty static. (I mean…not really but kind of. All of the NPI numbers are going to go up because of how it’s calculated and the minimum number of matches rule. Bottom line, conferences with good numbers will provide the top teams in that conference an advantage and that’s what I want to look at here.) I will also point out that the win/loss records will be DIII only from this point on. NPI doesn’t care about non-DIII matches.

In the ASC we have a group of four and all are above 0.500. Undefeated ETBU leads the way and is our current NPI leader. Their Strength of Schedule (SOS) is above 0.600 so they’ve played good teams. They are going to win this conference and get the Automatic Qualifier (AQ) unless something shocking comes. Mary Hardin-Baylor is 10-1, which is great, but their SOS is only 0.516. Because of this, their NPI is only 56.15. The best team by a large margin that they’ve played is St Thomas and that’s their loss. We really don’t know what we have with this team. HSU’s NPI is slightly under UMHB even with 2 losses because their SOS is almost 0.060 higher. I think UMHB is better but their matches will be close. HPU has the second highest SOS in conference but have the most losses and are 5-3. Still, their NPI is above 50, which means that these conference matches will help the top 2 teams if they can win out. The problem is that there just aren’t many conference matches so a lot will depend on what is on their schedule not in conference. Just a unique conference because of only having 4 teams. Still, great job by the ASC putting up really good NPI numbers.

The C2C only has five teams eligible for NPI so not much different than the ASC. They currently just have two teams above 50 in Chris Newport and Salisbury. Both of these teams are at 6-3 and both probably believe they are NCAA Tournament teams. Speaking of unique conferences, because this one doesn’t play a conference schedule, it’s all up to what they have on their schedule. The top 4 teams will play in a tournament later this year but the problem is that both UC Santa Cruz and Mary Washington are below 50 NPI. (UCSC sits at 49.80.) Three of the teams in this conference have an SOS above 0.600 in CNU, Salisbury and Mary Washington. I think this conference sports a pretty even spread but with the C2C it really doesn’t matter.

We run into problems with the NWC. This is the conference where having a deep group of teams with good NPI means the most if they want to get an at-large bid. Currently, only two teams in Whitworth and Puget Sound have NPIs over 50. Whitworth is the only team with a record over 0.500. All credit in the world to Whitworth for their play this weekend beating both Northwestern and Trinity. They look like they are going to win that conference but strange things happen up north when they all start just focusing on each other. The hope is that Whitworth, Puget Sound, Linfield and Pacific Lutheran all have SOS numbers over 0.600 so maybe they just played really good teams but the NPI numbers are in and pretty much set in stone. I do not see an at-large for this conference so the AQ is a must.

Only one team in the SAA is under 0.500 and that’s Rhodes. There are four teams above 50 NPI with both Sewanee and Millsaps right there at 49+. Even Rhodes and Oglethorpe aren’t too bad sitting around 47. This is definitely a conference that can support at least one at-large bid if not two. The concern would be that both Berry (8-1) and Centre (6-2) have an SOS in the 0.570s so maybe their NPIs are suspect? Still, Berry just beat Emory so that seems to settle that for them. Centre has a win over Transy and a Hanover team that just beat Otterbein. Southwestern has the highest SOS in conference, which surprises me as I would think Trinity had the toughest schedule. Remember that SOS is based on records and Southwestern has played undefeated IWU and one-loss teams in Gust Adolphus and St Thomas (giving them their losses). It will come down to whether two or three of the teams in this conference can really dominate the rest of the conference and that is the rub. You want a high NPI conference but that makes those matches more difficult.

The SCAC has 12 teams and an unbalanced schedule. In fact, we have Ozarks in this conference and they have yet to play a DIII team. For the most part, this conference hasn’t really challenged themselves with a tough schedule. Concordia has the highest SOS at 0.597 with St Thomas second at 0.573. With that said, they have 8 teams with an NPI of 50 or higher, which is pretty darn good. I also think that the spread of those 8 teams is split evenly down the two divisions. (Remember, that each division in the SCAC will play each other division team twice while playing the other division only once.) St Thomas is the NPI leader here with Hendrix right behind. Colorado College, which sits third in NPI at 52.85, probably has the best wins in conference so they cannot be overlooked. If I’m looking from afar at this conference, I would say they’ve done a nice job scheduling with NPI in mind (whether they did or not). Again, the trick here is to get two teams dominating the rest of conference to get the biggest bump possible. I do believe that this conference can support an at-large team based on these numbers.

In the SCIAC, I just gave some love to Cal Lu and look who has the second highest NPI…it’s the Regals. La Verne is sitting pretty at 61.85 (3^rd best in the nation) and they are followed by Cal Lu, CMS and Whittier. Whittier is at 54.23. There is a gap to Redlands at 51.09 with the other four teams all below 50 right now although Chapman is just under at 49.86. There is no doubt this conference can support an at-large team and possibly two. The trick would be to beat La Verne and get those mega game NPI points from them. The big concern with this conference are the SOS numbers. Only La Verne and CMS are near 0.600 while Cal Lutheran is the only other team above 0.500. That makes me think that La Verne and CMS could run away in this conference and pack away those NPI points the conference has put together. Chapman would have been a team to watch here but they had a rough weekend (I heard they had a key injury). They had a good win against Whitworth when healthy. I will revisit something I said about CMS and an at-large bid. I’m not sure they can get one without beating La Verne at least once. The conference is going to help but I’m not sure there is enough points there without getting a good QWB win, as well.

You kind of get what I’m doing here? I will now walk through each conference and see if they are a one bid conference or not. If not, I’ll add some words.

The AMCC is one bid.

American Rivers can support an at-large. They have Dubuque and Coe above 55 with three others above 50. (Wartburg, Neb Wesleyan and Simpson)

Atlantic East is one bid.

CCIW can support multiple bids. IWU is leading at 61.88 but they also have Carthage and North Park above 55 and three others above 50 (although just barely). The problem here is that this is a Region VIII conference and when playing out-of-conference you are usually playing a really good team. That can be great if you win but not so much if you lose. Interesting that both Carthage and North Park have an SOS under 0.540.

CCS is one bid.

Centennial always seems to support multiple bids. The question is how many? This year looks a tad different but it’s still a conference that should get multiple bids. Johns Hopkins is first at 57.55 with an SOS of 0.640. Haverford sits second with Swarthmore third and both are above 55 NPI. Haverford has played a slightly more difficult schedule. Franklin & Marshall, who I’ve had ranked all year, has an SOS of just 0.500. Their NPI is 54.81 with just one loss. Last year, they just gobbled up NPI game points but that’s not the case this season…yet. Gettysburg is lurking at 53.83 and then two others are above 50. The points are there in this conference but last year we had three teams just running away with NPI points. It will be a little tighter this season.

CNE is one bid.

Commonwealth is probably one bid. Only Eastern and Messiah are above 55 NPI and no one else is above 50 so the conference is not going to help. Could both get a bid if their out-of-conference schedules allow for it? Yes, but without looking I doubt it. Messiah’s SOS, by the way, is 0.675 while Eastern’s is only 0.517.

CUNYAC…ugh.

Empire 8 is one bid.

Freedom is one bid.

Great Northeast is one bid.

HCAC is a maybe. Normally, this is a one bid conference with Transy getting that bid. Half of their teams are above 50 NPI with Rose-Hulman leading the way at 56.45. Transy is second at 54.00. The conference will not hurt anyone’s chances but I’m not sure there is enough her to prop up a second team if either Rose-Hulman or Transy run away in the conference.

Landmark is most likely one bid. Scranton is the wildcard. The conference isn’t going to help too much but if they can take a match against Juniata and then lose in the conference tournament they may have enough to get in.

Liberty League can support an at-large bid. Five of the nine teams are above 50 NPI and both Ithaca and William Smith are above 56 NPI.

Little East is one bid.

MASCAC is one bid.

MIAC is a possible two bid conference. The teams, for the most part, aren’t going to help but if both Gust Adolphus and St Ben can dominate then it’s possible. I think St Olaf is too far back although their SOS is a ton higher than St Ben’s. St Ben’s best win is Neb Wesleyan so who knows what they are right now.

The MIAA can support multiple bids. Calvin actually leads here at 57.24 with Hope sitting fourth at 53.24. They are the only teams (along with Adrian) who have an SOS over 0.600. Sitting between them is St Mary’s (IN) and Albion. Both of those teams have an NPI in the 56 range.

The MWC is one bid.

The NACC is one bid. There are so many bad NPI teams in this large conference. I would really recommend splitting this conference into two. Ugh.

The NCAC is one bid. Some good teams here but the starting values of Wittenberg, Denison and John Carroll (all in the 53s) seems too low to prop up two of them.

The NESCAC is multiple bid. Sigh. The have four teams above 57 right now including Wesleyan who has an SOS of 0.434. They have 8 teams above 50. They will once again get at least 3 bids.

The NEWMAC is multiple bid but, at most, just one additional bid. MIT leads this one at 57.25 with Springfield at 56.21. They have 7 teams above 50 NPI. The question is whether a team like Smith or Coast Guard or Babson can sneak in instead of a Springfield if they do well.

The NJAC is traditionally one bid but they have 7 of their 9 teams above 50 NPI. Only William Paterson has an SOS above 0.600 although Stockton is at 0.557. New Jersey City and Kean sit right above 55 NPI. This will be an interesting conference to watch as they look, in theory, like they can support two bids.

North Atlantic…ugh. They have 8 teams and 5 have yet to win a match.

The OAC can support multiple bids although it probably needs to be Otterbein and Marietta. Heidelberg sits third at 52.69.

The ODAC can support multiple bids. They might be able to squeeze out two at-large teams. Lynchburg and Virginia Wesleyan are in the 58 range while W&L is at 57.55. Six of their teams are above 50 NPI. I mean Bridgewater is pretty good and they are at 54.70.

I don’t see the PAC getting multiple bids. Both Grove City and Hiram at 55 but I think only one of them can go as the conference won’t help much.

Skyline is one bid.

SLIAC is one bid.

SUNYAC is one bid.

The UAA is multiple bid but I don’t think they will be as dominate as last season. It doesn’t help that CWRU is below 50 but they are starting to play better. Both Chicago and NYU sit at 52, which seems like a long road unless they really do damage in conference. WashU, Carnegie Mellon and Emory are the three likely teams although Emory is at 54.16 and if you remember from an earlier preseason article, they do not play a full slate of matches.

UMAC is one bid.

United East is one bid.

USA South is one bid.

WIAC has at least three bids right now. Every team is above 50 so the conference is going to help but will it be enough to get a 4^th team in? UW-Stevens Point sits 4^th at 53.82 while UW-Platteville sits 5^th at 6^th at 51.14. In between is UW-La Crosse. If UWSP wins out against the teams below and takes a match against one of the top 3, will it be enough? The one big thing in these teams favor is that they all seem to play tough teams out-of-conference. It also should be pointed out that Whitewater’s SOS is only 0.529. Only UW-Oshkosh and UW-Platteville have an SOS over 0.600.

There will be 21 at-large bids this season and as I count down the conferences I’m right about at that number when I factor in conferences that may get 2 or 3 at-large bids. Of course, we can always have upsets that tilt things but I feel pretty good 3 weeks in with that analysis.

Lots of work ahead for me as I get ready for our trip. I’m hoping, but unsure, if I can go back to my old format for Match Days during the weekends. Since we’re in conference play, it basically halves the matches I have to list. It also kind of helps that the conferences are playing the bulk of their matches over 3 days (including Sunday) although I still hate doing big Match Days for Sundays.

Time to spend some time with the (hot) wife. I haven’t seen her for a few days. I’m hoping she’s still around. If not, get those hot single grand mother phone numbers ready.

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