And now World Grand Prix previews?

Is that logo supposed to look like something?

Honestly, I'm about as surprised as you are. It seems stupidly early to be talking about the FIVB World Grand Prix — basically the women's equivalent of the World League — as that tournament doesn't start until August. Not long prior to the new NCAA women's season, and it still feels like the last NCAA women's season only just concluded (even though it's been 4 months). But I like the one-a-week model I've settled into with the World League pieces, and if I'm to do that for World Grand Prix, I'd need to start next week. So while I'm surprised, that'll be how it'll work. Tuesdays World League, Thursdays World Grand Prix.

Despite having said that the World Grand Prix is more or less equivalent to the World League on the men's side, the tournaments are organized quite differently. The World League is mostly stable from year to year in terms of composition, as only the bottom 2 teams need to defend their places from one year to the next. Teams in the World Grand Prix essentially have to qualify anew every year, though of the 16 teams in last year's event 14 are present this year.

The tournament expands to 20 teams in 2013 (hence the uber-early preview pieces), and part of the reason why is European qualification for this year was handled a bit poorly. Instead of a qualification tournament (used instead of the CEV Championships in years when the CEV Championships don't happen), the FIVB just included the top four teams from the European League. Which was concurrent with last year's World Grand Prix (it was held earlier in the year because of the Olympics). That meant that the top European nations for volleyball like Italy, Poland, Russia, and Turkey either sent their B- or C-team, or didn't even go. The four European League qualifiers were Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Netherlands — not exactly traditional volleyball powerhouses. Italy, Russia, Turkey, and Germany were eventually added to this year's tournament for reasons you can pretty well say were political. Poland qualified automatically beforehand, for reasons that aren't entirely transparent (let your conspiracy theories take flight). China and Japan likewise qualified automatically, though Japan's reason can be explained as they're the host nation for the final round. The Pan-American Cup qualifies four teams from NORCECA and two from CSV, and they're the six teams you'd expect. The Asian Cup qualified Thailand, a pretty traditional women's volleyball nation, and interestingly, Kazakhstan. CAVB's lone representative is Algeria, attending by appointment rather than qualification.

The tournament proceeds differently than the World League, too. Whereas the World League plays a four-week double round robin with all teams in one of three pools, the World Grand Prix initial round is three weeks long, playing a single round robin with a different pool of teams each week. For instance, defending champions USA face Brazil, Poland, and Russia in week 1, Serbia, Netherlands, and Algeria in week 2, and Japan, Czech Republic, and Bulgaria in week 3. All 20 teams' results from all 3 weeks are then ranked together to see which 5 teams join Japan in the final.

So, I'll preview each team, starting with the 6 who weren't in the tournament last year and then the 14 who were in inverse order. I suppose the order of teams new to the tournament this year will be a little bit arbitrary. Here's how the rundown will look:

Algeria
Kazakhstan
Bulgaria
Czech Republic
Netherlands
Russia (they sat out 2012, but are usually a pretty strong volleyball nation)
Argentina
Puerto Rico
Dominican Republic
Serbia
Italy
Japan
Poland
Germany
Cuba
China
Thailand
Turkey
Brazil
USA

Should be fun. These'll start Thursday next week.