Returning Players (Liberos)

Returner week continues! Returner week is a lot like “Shark Week” but without the water and the sharks. As a reminder, I chose players based on awards won in 2017 and after sprinkling in some of the NCAA statistical leaders from last year. I’m sure this will cause some excellent players to fall through the……

Returning Players (Setters & Right Sides)

I think conference preview/prediction week will start next Monday so for this week I wanted to look at some of the key returners to the West Region. The main problem I had for this series is how to choose those players. My solution was to focus on the players that won awards in 2017 and……

Happy Anniversary – D3VBWest

Happy anniversary to D3VBWest as it celebrates its first year in existence! It was 1-year ago today that I published my first post and this little website was born. You can find that first post here, but suffice to say it rivals “The Great Gatsby” and “Pride and Prejudice” as some of the greatest works……

Hitting Percentage – 2018 Version

If you remember from last year, I wrote about the only statistic that was common to the last 7 national champions in Division III volleyball. The statistic is hitting percentage and we now have to make that the last 8 national champions as CMS finished 8th in the nation. I wanted to loop back around……

Trinity Schedule Analysis

When I was doing my homework for the conference previews/predictions posts (coming soon to a website near you) I realized that I didn’t do a write-up on the Trinity schedule. Trinity always has one of the tougher schedules in the nation and this year is no different. They are fortunate enough to be hosting two……

Ricky Nelson’s Top 25

Ricky Nelson has come out with his annual preseason Top 25, which you can find here. My Top 25 can be found here. Just looking at the Top 10 and the big differences are Ithaca (Ricky’s #10 team and my #24), Pacific Lutheran (Ricky has them unranked while I have them at 8) and Ohio……

D3VBWest 2018 Preseason Top 25

I didn’t do a Top 25 last year since I didn’t want to step on my leader’s (Ricky Nelson) toes. I always enjoy his Top 25, and he’s probably about to release his version, so I figured I’d stomp around with my size 13s and invite some ridicule. Emory Washington (Mo.) Colorado College Wittenberg Calvin……

Best Out-Of-Conference Records

I wrote a post awhile back that listed the conference records and how each did. I also broke up the conferences by region (curse the UAA and its mixed region setup). Anyway, that research showed that although the New York and New England regions were in the bottom half record-wise, they accounted for 6 of……

NCAA Championship Committee Report

The NCAA Championship Committee Report is out and can be found here. With respect to volleyball, one important development was announced and that was a reduction of the number of at-large bids (Pool C) to be handed out in 2018. This is due to an increase in Pool B bids to two (2) from one.……

McMurry Newest DIII Member

McMurry University is once again an active DIII member and their teams are now eligible for NCAA championships. Back in 2011, McMurry decided to switch to DII but reversed course in 2014. Now, 4-years later they have passed all the necessary steps required by the NCAA. Because of their switch to DII and back to……