College volleyball bracketology, 4th version

Let's have some fun!

First things first, the gauntlet has been thrown down. Yours truly has accepted a bracketology challenge with Taylor Lynn (@beatjoelunardi over on twitter — give'm a follow!). First things first is picking conference tournament winners. The MEAC have already completed theirs (and more on that in a second), so we'll skip over them. Here are my picks. Taylor's are in brackets where different.

America East: New Hampshire
Atlantic 10: VCU
Atlantic Sun: East Tennessee State (Lipscomb)
Big East: Marquette
Big Sky: North Dakota (Portland State)
Big South: Radford
C-USA: Tulsa
CAA: College of Charleston
Horizon: Milwaukee
MAAC: Marist
Mid-American: Ohio
Missouri Valley: Wichita State
Northeast: LIU Brooklyn
Ohio Valley: Morehead State
Patriot: American
SoCon: Furman (Georgia Southern)
Southland: Central Arkansas
Summit: IUPUI
Sun Belt: Western Kentucky
SWAC: Alabama State (Texas Southern)
WAC: New Mexico State

Now that that's out of the way, we'll get on with our usual party. One thing of note with this bracketology is that four automatic bids are now etched in stone — the aforementioned MEAC tournament (won by Hampton) along with the clinched automatic bids for three conference regular-season champions, in leagues that don't have tournaments. These bids to go Louisville (American Athletic), Colorado State (Mountain West), and Yale (Ivy League). Several others are close, most notably Missouri in the SEC, but they're not locked-down just yet.

So let's get to it.

SEEDS

1. Texas
2. Penn State
3. Washington
4. Missouri
5. USC
6. Florida
7. Stanford
8. Nebraska
9. Minnesota
10. Colorado State
11. San Diego
12. Duke
13. Michigan State
14. Kentucky
15. Kansas
16. Wisconsin

LAST FOUR IN:

1. Purdue
2. Ohio State
3. UCLA
4. Arizona State

FIRST FOUR OUT:

1. Colorado
2. Virginia Tech
3. NC State
4. Northwestern

NEXT FOUR OUT:

1. St Mary's
2. Miami
3. Colgate
4. Xavier

At-large hopefuls everywhere cringed when UC Santa Barbara beat Cal State Northridge the other night. It opens the door for three Big West teams to make the tournament (though the Matadors' bid is far from etched in stone), in a year when few conferences and teams will be getting at-larges. Nine conferences got at-larges last year; that number will probably be smaller this year (and remember, there's one more conference this year than there was last year).

Instead of putting in putative auto-bid holders, I'll use my picks above (where different from the putative holders).

NEBRASKA REGIONAL:

(1) Texas vs Alabama State
LSU vs Tulsa

Marquette vs Iowa State
(16) Wisconsin vs IUPUI

(9) Minnesota vs North Dakota
Alabama vs Milwaukee

Creighton vs Wichita State
(8) Nebraska vs Radford

USC REGIONAL:

(5) USC vs New Mexico State
BYU vs UC Santa Barbara

VCU vs Georgia
(12) Duke vs East Tennessee State

(13) Michigan State vs Cal
Ohio vs Butler

Central Arkansas vs Arkansas
(4) Missouri vs Hampton

KENTUCKY REGIONAL:

(3) Washington vs Marist
Hawaii vs Ohio State

Louisville vs Utah
(14) Kentucky vs Morehead State

(11) San Diego vs LIU-Brooklyn
Michigan vs Arizona State

Florida State vs Oregon
(6) Florida vs Furman

ILLINOIS REGIONAL:

(7) Stanford vs Butler
North Carolina vs Cal State Northridge

Purdue vs UCLA
(10) Colorado State vs College of Charleston

(15) Kansas vs Arizona
Illinois vs Oklahoma

American vs Western Kentucky
(2) Penn State vs New Hampshire

CONFERENCES BY NUMBER OF BIDS:

9 – Big Ten, Pac-12

7 – Southeastern

4 – Big 12

3 – Atlantic Coast, Big East, Big West

2 – West Coast

While not a great deal changed from the last bracket to this one, I still like the last one better. I feel like this one isn't as good, but maybe I fudged a little on the last one, cherry-picking auto-qualifiers from low conferences to fit my needs. Reality isn't so convenient, it seems.

The general trends remain the same. At-larges are very scarce outside of a few power conferences, and I'm not sold on the idea that the SEC are included in that list. Seven seems to be pushing the envelope for them, but I'm not sure who to cut, really. They all seem more solidly in than the lowest Pac-12 and Big Ten teams (as you see in the Last Four In list). We'll see how things sort themselves out in the coming weeks.