NCAA men’s volleyball: Hawaii athletic director David Matlin joins expanded selection committee

Hawaii athletic director David Matlin has been added to an expanded NCAA men’s volleyball tournament selection committee.

This is a good thing, expanding from three to five members.

In 2018 when UC Irvine was chosen over Hawaii, the committee members were from UCLA, Ohio State and NJIT. The first two had conflicts of interest since their teams were under consideration. And the brackets that came out ended up favoring UCLA and Ohio State (IMHO). Back then the play-in match wasn’t considered part of the NCAA tourney in terms of the result being recognized. (Thanks for playing, King, anyone remember them losing to Ohio State? No on the bracket). And apparently the seventh team didn’t get any of the NCAA “swag.”

Also think it’s wrong that when teams lose in the quarterfinals are immediately sent home and don’t get to stay for the All-America banquet later in the week. IMHO the banquet should be the Monday before and not the Wednesday after the quarterfinals. But that’s just me.

Thanks to Vinnie Lopes from Off The Block for this:

The NCAA men’s volleyball committee along with expanding from three to five members will have four first-year committee members this year, including two head coaches.
Besides Matlin, Stanford coach John Kosty is the other West Coast rep. King’s Ryan Booher is the other coach named. Both he and Kosty were selected to the committee for four-year terms.
Kosty is in his 14th season as the Cardinal head coach and has guided Stanford to top-10 finishes in the national rankings 10 times in the last 12 seasons. He also guided Stanford to the 2010 NCAA championship en route to being named the National Coach of the Year and then coached the Cardinal to the 2014 NCAA Tournament finals.
Booher was recently selected as the ConfCarolinas Coach of the Decade and is the longest tenured active coach in the conference. The Tornado under Booher have won three consecutive ConfCarolinas regular season championships and in 2018 guided the program to its first NCAA Tournament appearance.
Both Kosty and Booher are the first coaches in recent history to be named to the NCAA men’s volleyball committee, which is typically comprised of athletic administrators. Kosty will serve as a West Coast representative, while Booher will be the committee’s Southeast representative.
Matlin replaces Ashley Armstrong who departed the committee after leaving the UCLA athletics department to become the deputy athletics director at Loyola Marymount. In five years of Matlin overseeing the Rainbow Warriors athletics department, the men’s volleyball team has reached the NCAA Tournament three times and annually has one of the nation’s top two home attendance averages.
NJIT athletics director Lenny Kaplan will remain the chair of the committee for the second consecutive year.
The NCAA men’s volleyball committee will unveil the seven-team field for the 2020 NCAA Tournament on Sunday, April 26. The tournament field will include five conference champions and two at-large bids.
Final six at George Mason in Fairfax, Va.
Purdue Fort Wayne senior associate athletic director Tim Heffron retired and has left a vacancy for a Midwest rep.