Lewis given at-large over Pepperdine
sorry, couldn’t create a new thread for this earlier.
Here’s the NCAA release
http://www.ncaa.com/news/volleyball-men/article/2014-04-27/loyola-chicago-tabbed-top-seed-2014-nc-mens-volleyball
agree with most of the comments at the bottom of the previous thread., particularly Lewis over Pepperdine. But the Waves didn’t play any matches outside of the MPSF and that likely hurt them.
The seedings were very interesting. Loyola has held steady at No. 1. But you do see an agenda here.
IMHO this was for regional attendance purposes. which is really sad.
Over-under on time of Stanford-Erskine match? 45 minutes? Some of it will depend on how Shaw is following his injury against BYU.
MPSF Champion BYU (21-8) received the NCAA two seed, advancing to Thursday’s semifinal against the 3-6 Tuesday play-in winner between Stanford (22-8, MPSF at-large) and Erskine (21-6, Coastal Carolinas Automatic) at 6 p.m. CT. MIVA Champion Loyola Chicago, who will host the national championships, received the No. 1 seed after going 27-1 this season. Loyola will play the winner of fourth seed Lewis (23-7) and fifth seed Penn State (24-6) at 8 pm CT. The semifinal matches will be streamed on NCAA.com, with ESPNU broadcasting the championship match Saturday at 7 p.m. CT.
Stanford seeks a third national title (1997, 2010), while BYU is going for its fourth (1999, 2001, 2004).
It was all about money. That’s why Lewis got the nod. Lewis wouldn’t even be in the picture if they were in the mpsf. They would either be vying for the eighth place spot or lower.
they registered only THREE wins against teams with a record above 0.500 against D1 opponents.
I get that gifting Lewis an undeserved bid is in the best interest of the game, becasue taking Pepperdine would have resulted in a huge drop in ticket sales and the NCAA might have reconsidered their expansion.
Not to mention they played
McKendree (at home), Missouri Baptist (at home), Sacred Heart (on the road), Mt Olive (at home), Erskine (at home), George Mason (at home), and St Francis (at home). Pepp would of easily won all those matches.
i think the selection of lewis over pepperdine had more to do with “minimizing” costs … rather than “making money.” someone on VT posted that ticket sales had been robust even before it was known that 2 midwest teams were in the tourney. so it would seem it has less to do with ticket sales.
maybe it has to do with actually having butts in the seats … so that the arena isn’t empty on national television. the brackets were also set up to nearly guarantee that a midwest team will make the finals, with loyola and lewis on one side (although penn st could play spoiler).
Bad idea. Why Stanford? BYU holds the MPSF champions already. Other divisions such as MIVA, CCA are not with the MPSF playing. Just a hype on the tournament. MPSF and Stanford is a bad idea because Stanford was the weaker team and felt their number one 7ft could not carry his team, but instead relied on liberos and short setters to pull his team through. In other words, style of play is not for MPSF, but instead they are giving into others or specialty players as a Joby Ramos was to UH. A short set and a libero.
I think the selection of Lewis over Pepperdine was more about making sure that there are not two MPSF teams in the finals.
Not playing any east coast teams in preseason is a ridiculous reason not to make it over Lewis. Hell UCSB and UCI should have gotten in over Lewis. what a joke, im still pissed at BYU for losing to Loyola and lewis the first two games of their season, it’s made this post season into a complete joke.
We’ll see if 1) Loyola-Chicago is for real & 2) can BYU win it away from Smith Fieldhouse…
Nice to see another school being screwed by the NCAA. Not only Hawaii
it’s not just a school being screwed … but an entire conference.
5. my point was Pepperdine didn’t play any matches outside of its conference schedule.
there is an interview posted on VT (from the Off the Block site) that purports to be Q&A with selection committee chairman, ron shayka (out of george mason).
he said that pepperdine not playing OOC matches didn’t “hurt” them, per se. but he did say it had an “effect” on their exclusion (although, he doesn’t really expand on that). instead, he does say that that lewis playing OOC matches against ‘ranked’ teams from the mpsf, miva and the conference carolinas helped their strength of schedule. (i’d say only 1/3 of that statement is true.)
shayka also said the factors that they looked at produced an “RPI-like number,” which had lewis rated as the 2nd strongest team in the field. if that’s so, then (as someone on VT pointed out) … why isn’t lewis the #2 seed??? where lewis was placed in the bracket runs completely contrary to what the committee chair is claiming was the basis for their selection.
i don’t know what ‘rankings’ the chair was referring to, but there no ranked teams from the conference carolinas in the avca poll. penn st is the highest ranked eiva team. the top 10 consists of 9 mpsf teams, and loyola (out of the miva). and until this week, lewis was ranked behind hawaii (a team that didn’t even make the mpsf tournament) … and yet lewis is in the national tournament.
otherwise, god help us if the ncaa is now applying the RPI to men’s volleyball! there just aren’t enough teams on the men’s side for the RPI to be worth a damn. whatever regional biases exist in the use of RPI in the women’s game … it would be magnified tremendously on the men’s side, where the sample of teams are just too small.
Saw Emily Maglio play on a livestream over the weekend and she was a complete stud, her team would literally start losing whenever she subbed out in the back row and when she returned they would start winning again. She is fast at closing the block and pretty unstoppable hitting wise or even when she didn’t get it down it would put the other team in trouble.