First, briefly, the story of the last automatic bid. It seems I was wrong about the Big Sky final not being available for viewing, because there were links to it on the Idaho State and Northern Colorado websites. And what seemed like free access was awfully easy to come by (it had you fill out a registration form, but it didn’t squawk at me when I entered my name as I.P. Freeley, living at 123 Fake St. in Springfield, NT 12345). But I’ll be damned if I could figure out how to actually open it. So I settled for an audio stream of a radio broadcast. Volleyball’s not the best sport for radio broadcasts, but we make do with what we have. Idaho State was the #2 seed in the Big Sky tournament, and Northern Colorado the #4 seed. The Bears (that’s Northern Colorado) were also the hosts, and had knocked off the top seeds Portland State in the semifinals. The Bengals of Idaho State won the first two sets but let the lead slip away from them in the third, were badly outplayed in the fourth, and then lost the race to 15. Northern Colorado took the last automatic bid with their (21-25, 20-25, 25-18, 25-12, 15-11) win. You might call this an upset, as the #4 beat the #2, but Northern Colorado actually has a markedly better RPI than Idaho State (82 versus 96) and just a touch off that of the conference regular season champions (77). So they seem no more or less deserving of the bid than anyone the Big Sky could have offered.
There have actually been quite a few changes since Thursday. Ohio State falls from the seeds after two losses to end their conference season. Kansas State is slipping badly. The Wildcats are losers of five of their last six matches. They’ve still done enough to get a bid — I had them as a ‘gimme’ weeks ago — but where they were at one point in the discussion to get a seed of their own, they’ll now likely end up bracketed as a second-round opponent for either Penn State or Stanford (can’t be Texas, since they’re conference-mates). If they even get past the first round.
Another team that’s tanking at just the wrong time is Notre Dame. After they bowed out against lowly South Florida in the Big East tournament, they lost Thanksgiving night to a less-lowly team in Ohio, but still that’s a match you figure they should win. And after having the MAC with two bids in some earlier bracketologies, I’m giving them two again in this last one. Ohio’s RPI is a little low for traditional at-large consideration (you want to be in the top 40 or so, they’re at 62), but they’ve been right on the cusp all season. They played one of the most difficult non-conference schedules in the nation, facing Pepperdine, Kentucky, Oregon, North Carolina, NC State, and Notre Dame, all of them likely tournament teams, and the win over Notre Dame is a big resume booster. It certainly shoots them past Xavier.
For this final bracketology, I’ll include a couple of rote lists. One of the at-large bids, and one of the teams ranked 1-64 in full. Then tomorrow, I’ll extrapolate the committee’s 1-64 rankings from the S-curve of the announced bracket (really, it’s way less complicated than I just made it sound) and see how they compare (also just to see what the committee’s 1-64 rankings are). So with that in mind, here we go one last time.
Automatic bids are underlined.
SEEDS
1. Penn State
2. Stanford
3. Texas
4. Louisville
5. UCLA
6. Oregon
7. USC
8. Washington
9. Florida
10. Hawaii
11. Minnesota
12. Nebraska
13. Florida State
14. Dayton
15. BYU
16. Purdue
LAST FOUR TEAMS IN:
1. Arizona State
2. Ohio
3. Clemson
4. California
FIRST FOUR TEAMS OUT:
1. Xavier
2. Missouri
3. Georgia Tech
4. Northwestern
NEXT FOUR TEAMS OUT:
1. Santa Clara
2. Towson
3. Baylor
4. Morehead State
PURDUE REGIONAL:
(1) Penn State vs. Jackson State
Kentucky vs. Oklahoma
Iowa State vs. Tulsa
(16) Purdue vs. IPFW
(9) Florida vs. LIU-Brooklyn
North Carolina vs. Wichita State
Tennessee vs. North Carolina State
(8) Washington vs. East Tennessee State
NEBRASKA REGIONAL:
(5) UCLA vs. Maryland-Eastern Shore
Arkansas vs. Notre Dame
Miami vs. Central Arkansas
(12) Nebraska vs. Northern Colorado
(13) Florida State vs. Cleveland State
Texas A&M vs. Ohio
Northern Iowa vs. Colorado State
(4) Louisville vs. Colgate (my original S-curve had Belmont here, but Louisville and Belmont actually just played each other Friday night, for reasons which escape me)
TEXAS REGIONAL:
(3) Texas vs. Belmont
Michigan State vs. Pepperdine
Kansas vs. Clemson
(14) Dayton vs. Yale
(11) Minnesota vs. New Mexico State
San Diego vs. Arizona State
Creighton vs. San Diego State
(6) Oregon vs. Hofstra
CALIFORNIA REGIONAL:
(7) USC vs. Fairfield
Marquette vs. St. Mary’s
Western Kentucky vs. Bowling Green 😀
(1o) Hawaii vs. Liberty
(15) BYU vs. College of Charleston
Ohio State vs. California
Kansas State vs. Michigan
(2) Stanford vs. Binghamton
CONFERENCES BY NUMBER OF BIDS
7 – Big Ten, Pac-12
5 – Atlantic Coast, Big 12, Southeastern
4 – West Coast
3 – Big East, Missouri Valley
2 – Mid-American, Mountain West
1 – Other 21 conferences
AT-LARGE TEAMS:
Arizona State
Arkansas
California
Clemson
Iowa State
Kansas
Kansas State
Kentucky
Marquette
Miami
Michigan
Michigan State
Minnesota
Nebraska
North Carolina
North Carolina State
Northern Iowa
Notre Dame
Oklahoma
Ohio
Ohio State
Oregon
Pepperdine
Purdue
San Diego
San Diego State
Tennessee
Texas A&M
UCLA
USC
Washington
Wichita State
1-64 ranking of all teams in the tournament
1. Penn State
2. Stanford
3. Texas
4. Louisville
5. UCLA
6. Oregon
7. USC
8. Washington
9. Florida
10. Hawaii
11. Minnesota
12. Nebraska
13. Florida State
14. Dayton
15. BYU
16. Purdue
17. Iowa State
18. Ohio State
19. Kansas
20. Texas A&M
21. Miami
22. San Diego
23. Western Kentucky
24. North Carolina
25. Tennessee
26. Marquette
27. Creighton
28. Arkansas
29. Northern Iowa
30. Michigan State
31. Kansas State
32. Kentucky
33. Oklahoma
34. Michigan
35. Pepperdine
36. Colorado State
37. Notre Dame
38. San Diego State
39. St. Mary’s
40. North Carolina State
41. Wichita State
42. Bowling Green
43. Arizona State
44. Central Arkansas
45. Ohio
46. Clemson
47. California
48. Tulsa
49. IPFW
50. College of Charleston
51. Yale
52. Cleveland State
53. Northern Colorado
54. New Mexico State
55. Liberty
56. LIU-Brooklyn
57. East Tennessee State
58. Fairfield
59. Hofstra
60. Maryland-Eastern Shore
61. Colgate
62. Belmont
63. Binghamton
64. Jackson State
Well, in closing, I’d just like to say that hopefully someone out there enjoyed reading these as much as I did writing them. I’m excited to do them again next season (I don’t think the men’s season will be too conducive…if there’s even much coverage of men’s volleyball to begin with).
And now we wait those final hours until the selection show. Oh, the waiting….
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