I watched my Alma Mater UCSB lose a heartbreaker to Ohio State today in the NCAA Volleyball Tournament finals. I heard there were only 3 volleyball conferences or something like that. I also heard that UCSB was only 14-14 in the regular season, yet somehow still made it to the Final Four. I also heard that there is just the final four in the tournament, and not a larger tournament like basketball.
How did UCSB make it to the tournament?
Were they actually ranked in the top 4 despite their mediocre seasonal record?
Is there some sort of conference championship that determines who goes to the tournament?
OSU and PSU are represent two different conferences in the Final four (and neither conference is the Big 10.)
I would guess that Mens Volleyball is almost a Club Level sport at most Universities and many of the well known schools do not have a competitive program.
Mens Volleyball is not listed in Univ of Florida or the Univ of Texas athletic website, two of the biggest athletic schools in the country.
Men’s and women’s NCAA volleyball are very different. The women have a full 64 team field and many universities play. The men, on the other hand, have far fewer teams that play at the D1 level. UCSB only made the tournament by beating USC in the finals of the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation tournament - a huge surprise at the time, which they then “validated” by beating them again in the NCAA semis.
For the record, a team from the MPSF generally wins this thing most of the time, because the vast majority of the ranked teams are from the MPSF. In fact, in the May 2nd poll, Ohio State (8th) and Penn St. (10th) were the only schools in the Top 10 not in the MPSF. The Final 4 is 3 conference champions and 1 at-large; and the at-large bid just about always goes to a MPSF team.
There have been 41 NCAA titles handed out - 38 of them to current MPSF schools. As a proud UC Irvine Anteater, I happily watched my team lay claim to 2 titles in the last 5 years.
Thanks. I guess the 3 winners of each conference tournament gets to go, plus one at large. I guess UCSB went 14-14 in the regular season and then won the conference tournament.
What I find fascinating from the article linked in post #2, is that USC, the wild card team, was seeded…first. USC did have the best regular season record of the four teams–3 losses compared to OSU’s 6, Penn State’s 6, and UCSB’s 14–but still, the wild card having a number 1 seed? Weird.
It certainly would be in any other situation, I suppose, but keep in mind that only four teams make the tournament. The whole point of having an at-large is for a situation exactly like the one that played out this year - USC dominated the regular season, was ranked #1 almost all year, and then lost a 5 set match in the MPSF finals to the Gauchos. If there were no at large, then the clear-cut #1 team in the nation wouldn’t make the NCAA tournament based on losing their own conference tournament. If Duke is sitting at 33-2 but loses the ACC basketball final, they still get a #1 seed. Imagine if they had to go to the NIT?
And since the MPSF is so far ahead of the other conferences, it also rewards a 2nd MPSF team for having had a great season. In fact, if they were to simply select 4 at-large teams instead of the 3 conference champs, most years it would be MPSF teams alone. Based on the rankings, neither OSU nor Penn State would’ve been selected this year. And if there were an RPI for men’s volleyball, those two teams would surely be ranked even lower - cause while you mentioned their number of losses, keepp in mind that they are playing a predominantly East Coast schedule which would rank miles behind the schedule strength of every single team in the MPSF.
Take nothing away from OSU - they played great and deserved their title. But even after beating UCSB for the championship, their season record against the MPSF was 3-4. Against everyone else they went something like 25-2.