AVCA Top 25 – Final

The final AVCA Top 25 has come out and it’s no surprise undefeated Johns Hopkins claims the top spot for the first time this year and when it matters most. The Blue Jays captured 77 of the 78 first place votes. The other vote went to Emory who finished second in the voting. Now, you……

Johns Hopkins – Champions

This article is a tad late, I realize, but I still wanted to do it. It’s a nice way to close out the season and what a story the Johns Hopkins Blue Jays have been. JHU is only the third team in NCAA DIII history to go undefeated and the first in two decades. It……

2019 National Championship

Updates:  Daughter is married. Feet up in the hotel room. Wow! Johns Hopkins. What a great season. What a great Tournament run. Trinity spoiled the Blue Jays shot as the only team to sweep every match in the NCAA Tournament. It’s still never been done at DIII. I assume JHU doesn’t care. Congratulations. I assume……

Semifinals!

Updates:  I just checked the NCAA statistics for team hitting percentage. Through November 17th (the end of the regionals), Johns Hopkins is #1, Trinity is #8, Emory is #11 and Carthage is #12. Regardless of who wins, the trend will continue that you have to be efficient hitting to win a DIII volleyball championship. In……

Quarterfinals

Updates:  I was looking back at my posts from last year and saw that we had challenges starting with the Elite 8. This wasn’t taken away, right? We still will have challenges this year, I believe. Maybe you took my lack of comments regarding the first two sets as a sign that I was dealing……

Calm before the Storm

Yes, the title could be referring to the fact that the Elite 8 is set to start play tomorrow morning and don’t worry I’ll touch on that, but for me personally my daughter gets married in 3 days. As we approach the ceremony I’ve started to realize that every day that has just concluded is……

Bingham (HSU) Resigns

Hardin-Simmons Head Coach Sabrina Bingham has resigned to take on a new position as the Director of Volleyball Operations for the Abilene Youth Sports Authority (AYSA). I heard the news originally second hand and reached out to Sabrina. She responded, “I am excited for this next step. I love working with the youth in this……

AVCA All-Americans (2019)

The AVCA All-American teams have been announced, which you can find here. The AVCA Freshman of the year is Emma Davis of Juniata. The player of the year will be announced tomorrow at the championship banquet. The West Region had only one student-athlete make the first team and that was Phoebe Madsen of Claremont-Mudd-Scripps. She……

At-Large Criteria (West Perspective)

Yesterday I posted an article on the average criteria needed to secure an at-large bid. Today I wanted to focus a bit on the West Region with respect to what I wrote. As a short reminder, the average criteria of the 20 at-large teams for record, Strength of Schedule (SOS) and ranked wins in 2019……

At-Large Average Criteria (2019)

Of the five primary criteria there are three that come into play in each comparison and by this virtue become the most important. They are record, Strength of Schedule (SOS) and ranked wins. Although ranked wins is, by the rules, result driven and not percentage driven I still capture the percentage because frankly it seems……