Weekly Wrap-Up (9/17/23)

It’s once again time for the Weekly Wrap-Up! That one place on the Internet where you can go, hang out, enjoy yourself and listen to a crazy person spew forth rants. Yes, this is the Venice Beach of the web. As always, let’s look back before we look forward. This past week we had the D3VbWest Top 25 followed by the AVCA Top 25. We had the Players of the Week and the Region Leaders and a freebee on Thursday with the Region X Transfers. Of course, we had Match Days, as well, and you never know what fun you’ll find in those. The standings page on the left (or pulldown) has been updated but we do have a couple of matches today so no telling when/if I get to those. La Verne is our only undefeated team in the West while we still have winless teams in UT-Dallas and Concordia. For this week, we have matches every day except Monday.

Before we get to the conferences, let’s see what the crazy man has to say.

I noticed that Sharon Dingman (Colorado College) got her 600^th win last weekend at the East/West Challenge so congratulations to her! This got me thinking about coaches in the region so we’ll go down that path for a bit (all numbers are from the NCAA database and do not include this weekend).

No surprise that Julie Jenkins (Trinity) leads the region and all regions in wins by an active DIII coach. She should pass Rich Luenemann of WashU fame later this season for 2^nd overall all-time. The leader is Larry Bock of Juniata fame. He has 1348 wins or a little under 300 wins more than Julie right now. Second in the region in wins is Mark Massey (Puget Sound) at 713. He also has 8 ties, which always makes me laugh. Third on the list is Ed Garza (Austin College) at 659. Going through the list I was really surprised to see how many coaches have zero wins (around 50) all-time. Last on the list in region for wins is Savannah Cox (Redlands) who now has 3. So, I’ve never coached but am still tied with 50 other coaches on the list and only 3 behind Savannah!

I’ve seen a couple of 8 second calls this season after having never seen them in the past. The last one I saw was on Trinity’s Jozie Dhayer but it was overturned. I timed her on the “violation” and she took 5 seconds. She ALWAYS takes 5 seconds.

When I was doing the standings, I noticed that every NWC team that played two home matches this week are 2-0. The only team to lose a home match was Pacific (to George Fox). What does this tell us? Absolutely nothing. You have to win on the road and only GFU has done it so far.

I haven’t looked at the Top 25, yet, but I think there are only three undefeated teams that I’d put in my Top 10 (Update – Forgot about Emory. NVM.). Juniata, Hope and Oshkosh (probably in the order). WashU took three losses this weekend, which is insane to me. Where are my WashU parents that can tell me what happened here?

Speaking of undefeated, my leader, Ricky Nelson, has his “Last Team Standing” page up. He tracks who will be the last undefeated team to loss each year. We are still waiting for one team to lose in 2019. You can find that here. Ricky always forgets to enable comments for this post in case you wanted to guess which team you think will take it this year. I think Juniata is a lock this year so sorry about your loss to John Carroll this week. If I was picking a second-place team it would probably be Wesleyan.

Taking a look back at our region and with thoughts to an at-large bid, I think we are in trouble. We get four Automatic Qualifiers (AQ) and maybe a fifth if UCSC can win the C2C. Right now, the only at-large teams I see are Trinity, CMS and La Verne. The only team in the ASC to really play an at-large type of schedule was UT-Dallas but they are winless. I don’t think ETBU has done enough if they finish second and UMHB will have a Strength of Schedule (SOS) under 0.500. Puget Sound is possible as they have a nice win over Saint Ben (who just beat WashU) and Eastern but they really need Aurora to be better and that lost to Southwestern hurts in region. UC Santa Cruz is another possible at-large and they have a tough schedule that could get them there but SCIAC losses will hurt in region. They have also looked very so-so this season. Southwestern, TLU and Colorado College are a maybe. CC plays in a tough tournament in October that could push them over but all three teams will need wins against Trinity and a Trinity win won’t carry the same weight this year as previous years. I also think the at-large door may be closed to the rest of the SCIAC teams. So, if we assume Trinity wins the SCAC and CMS wins the SCIAC, we have only one at-large and La Verne is no lock. Diving deeper into this rabbit hole, that would mean no Region X Regional so the teams that do make it get sprayed out East. CMS would definitely not make it past the Midwest, which will probably be the toughest regional by a large amount. Same would go for La Verne and the NWC winner. The ASC winner and Trinity (or whomever) would probably make it to the East Coast for an easier regional.

If we assume CMS, Trinity and La Verne are our three best teams in the region then I’m not sure what it says about Region X. Normally, CMS and Trinity are title contenders but Trinity was swept at home by Oshkosh and CMS was swept down the road by Juniata. I simply don’t think, at this moment, that we have a title contender but that may have more to do with Juniata, Hope and Oshkosh being significantly better than the next tier of teams. Maybe Emory is in this top tier but we haven’t seen their ceiling, yet (best win is Tufts). I assume most of my readers are parents so the DIII memory of you goldfish are probably limited but our region, once the Texas teams were included, use to be the best top to bottom when it came to the regional. We would have regionals where 7 of the 8 teams were ranked. Just to annoy us, the NCAA would typically send another ranked team our way if we only had 7 teams (Hendrix and WashU come to mind). Of course, the New York and New England Regionals were always protected (per NCAA Rule 32.5 Subsection IV). In some way, the elimination of our regional is a good thing (for the Texas schools) but I can’t really say anything if we’re not going to have the elite teams in our region. We basically get what we get and don’t through a fit.

I think the interesting thing from an at-large perspective will be how many at-large bids Region VIII gets and how many teams will come out of the WIAC.

Are we really saying that UW-Eau Claire is their worst team this season?!?

Time to look at the conferences and we’ll start with the ASC. We had conference matches this week and ETBU has jumped into first with wins over both UTD and UMHB. Hardin-Simmons is the only other undefeated team in conference. It should be pointed out that Sul Ross State is not counted as a conference match any longer with their anticipated move to DII happening next year. That means only two teams will not make the conference tournament and right now that appears to be Concordia and McMurry. UT-Dallas is also at the bottom but I think they are still better than these two teams. The big matches this week both involved ETBU. Against UT-Dallas, ETBU scored 72 Points (18 Points/Set) against 54 for UTD so no fluke there. Against UMHB, and despite it going 5-sets, the Points were 87 (17.4 Points/Set) to 60 in favor of ETBU. Again, no fluke. Expect Graycee Mosley to get Player of the Week honors as she had 28, 11 and 32 kills this week. Not as much as a lock, but Lillie Hill has a great claim for the defensive side.

And now a sidebar or soapbox (as it were)…

The AVCA Player of the Week Award is really stupid. They just give them to random players from random teams who put up good stats against bad teams. That award needs to be going to players that are in the running for Player of the Year. Emily Smith from Peedoo Institute did great against four winless teams this week but, please, let’s look at Juniata, Oshkosh and Hope for someone that is excelling against top flight teams. AVCA needs to be better here or just hand out $5 coupons to Chunky Cheese to everyone. Honestly, you make the award meaningless when you do this. Is this done at DI or is this just a DIII thing?

Looking forward to this week in the ASC and the HSU/UMHB match should be a good one. If either McMurry or Concordia want to prove me wrong then you definitely need to win your match this week as you are playing each other. ETBU can’t be resting easy as they get rival LeTourneau at home this week.

Over to the NWC and it was strange how powerful that home court advantage was for (almost) everyone. The lone exception was George Fox 4-set win over Pacific and it was a 78 Point to 48 Point advantage. GFU hit 0.331 and looked really good in this one with Kassandra Staton getting 23 kills. Willamette got swept by both Whitworth and Whitman this weekend, which was surprising. I had them in the conference tournament hunt and maybe that is still the case but not a good sign for them. PLU had two sweeps to bounce back from a poor non-conference start to go 2-0. The Puget Sound/GFU 5-set match was a fun one with the Points going to UPS 83 to 69. Sarah Johnsen had 16 kills while hitting 0.406. Randi Rush had 50 assists in this one. It seems safe to say that these two teams will be in the conference tournament. I have to believe Whitworth will be another. The fourth looks wide open but PLU has made a claim. This week we get another Battle of the Sound as PLU and Puget Sound play. If you tell me that UPS wins in a sweep, I will not be surprised. If you tell me that PLU wins in a sweep, I will not be surprised. Willamette will be at home against PLU so if Willamette wants back in this then they need to win this one. The NWC schedule has PLU playing PLU on Saturday so not sure what this is about. I mean the win will be good but they can’t afford the loss. (I now see it’s their alumni match.) George Fox gets the East Washington teams (Whitworth and Whitman) at home so going 2-0 would be a big statement.

UC Santa Cruz is in for a fun week. They head to New England and play 4 good teams with 3 being away matches! Back in 2015, Southwestern did this with the SCIAC playing 4 matches (I think) at all were away over 3 days. If a team can pull it off then it’s a huge at-large shot in the arm. In Southwestern’s case, they won them all but it was especially nice to take down CMS in 5-sets. No, Kurt, the referees didn’t miss a call and no we don’t care what happened at the NCAA Tournament when these two teams played again. You really need to grow up. I mentioned above that UCSC probably isn’t an at-large team. Winning these four matches secures that they are. Taking 3 of 4 might do the same. As for this past week, they lost to good teams and beat teams they should going 2-2 so it really didn’t show us much or help their cause.

Over in the SCAC, they haven’t started conference so it was a mish mash of matches. Austin College is 8-1 with a loss to UMHB. Dallas is 8-3 but really hasn’t played anyone. Trinity had a great weekend, which greatly helped their at-large chances with wins over Franklin & Marshall and MIT. I thought the F&M fans were funny. It’s not often you can out-annoy Trinity fans especially at their place. (I mean that in a loving manner Trinity fans.) TLU went 3-1 in California with a loss to La Verne (who hit over 20 Points/Set). The Chicago win was important and keeps them in the maybe at-large conversation. Southwestern played one day over at Trinity taking down Pomona-Pitzer but losing in 5-sets to Whittier, which was a bit of a surprise. Whittier earned the win and the SU service receive was concerning at times. St Thomas was also in California and took a win against Cal Lutheran but lost to La Verne and Chapman. I was a bit surprised with the Chapman loss. Centenary plays today but did take down Lyon in 5-sets yesterday. Schreiner beat Howard Payne this week to give them their first loss on the year. Southwestern and Dallas host conference pods this weekend so we’ll get our first look at that this time next week. Dallas and Austin will be at Dallas but the traditional big hitters will be at Southwestern as we’ll get SU, TLU, CC and Trinity matches against each other. Seems like a tournament I should be at and there is an outside chance. It’s our anniversary (strike one) and we have this kitten (strike two). I wonder what the kitten policy is at the Robertson Center? My biggest fear would be taking Decker and Colorado College Kelli Miller looking at him and saying she’s seen cuter. That Miller Bar plays on my mind.

The SCIAC also hasn’t played conference but CMS and La Verne seem to have separated themselves when you factor in common opponents. The other two conference tournament spots are up in the air, but, of course, we haven’t even started. La Verne remained undefeated but it’s tough to say what their biggest win is. Carthage? Southwestern? Santa Cruz (twice)? TLU? They may need to secure one win from CMS to secure that at-large. CMS went 2-1 sweeping Chicago an UT-Dallas but then getting swept by Juniata. Points in that Juniata match were 60 (20 Points/Set) to 47. CMS hit 0.175 and struggled to stop the middle attack. Olivia Foley (Juniata) and Georgia McGovern (CMS) were fun to watch but Juniata just had too much firepower and really controlled the ball on their side of the net. Redlands and Oxy played non-DIII opponents. Whittier and Pomona-Pitzer were at Trinity with Whittier getting their only win (jerks). Pomona-Pitzer suffered a heartbreaker against Franklin & Marshall. Caltech was at Oberlin where they went 1-2. Chapman was at Cal Lu’s tournament where each team won 1 match. This week we’ll see a good one between Whittier and Pomona-Pitzer as both have good chances for the conference tournament based on their play so far this year. Whittier also gets La Verne so they are probably the team thrown into the fire first in conference.

Alright, the crazy man is done. As a side note, I lived on Venice Beach as a 5-year-old. Times are different although I think that piece of real estate hasn’t changed much. I know that the homeless there watched out for me and my younger sister as we didn’t have much supervision at times. Side note to the side note. I was actually hit by a model of the Bismark in the eye while leaving there. An older friend had made it and asked his younger brother to let me see it. Well, I guess this annoyed him so he threw it at me. I do have early memories of being taken to the hospital with my mom holding me up (and my bloody eye) to show other cars when she was trying to get by them in traffic. Maybe that’s a false memory but a cool story. Have I ever mentioned about hitchhiking as a 7-year-old in Topanga Canyon? Maybe another time.

Oh, UMHB is up 2-0 on Hendrix although they have been close games.