#298 - well screw you too

The top 4 seeds in the 2009 NCAA Women's Volleyball Tournament:

1. Penn St.
2. Texas
3. Florida St.
4. Stanford

you think football fans are the only ones who have to worry about the BCS?

Hawai'i has been ranked #3 in the AVCA coaches poll pretty much all year and they got slammed with the No. 12 seed while Florida St. (#14 in the polls) somehow snags the No. 3 seed? both Hawai'i and Florida St. have identical 28-2 records, but Hawai'i's two loses came to legitimate #2 Texas and #11 California, while Florida St. lost to #15 Florida and unranked Georgia Tech. Hawai'i has wins over #6 Stanford, #9 UCLA, and #22 St. Louis. Florida St. has only one quality win... over #5 Illinois. how does this happen? three letters... RPI.

what the heck is RPI? and how is it determined? i'll tell you how.. it's determined behind the closed doors of the NCAA... and what happens at the NCAA apparently stays at the NCAA. but let's take this from another perspective... the BCS.

in how many different sports does the NCAA have to fail with in order to instigate some kind of change with the BCS? obviously the deficiencies are most apparent in football, with perhaps an undefeated boise state (at No. 6 in the BCS polls) crossing their fingers to get a BCS berth with undefeated TCU (No. 4) a step ahead of them. now, in my opinion, there should only be one undefeated team in the country (if any) in ANY sport at the end of a season. and with this football bowl system, heck, we could have as many as four at the end of this season. there absolutely needs to be a playoff system in place for college football. if they can do it at the FCS level, sure they can do it at the FBS level. Just a little elite 8 bracket and you can get the winners of each BCS conference in there with 2 at-large bids from the mid-majors (although I would prefer just a straight up top 8 in the rankings).

but, i digress... women's volleyball DOES have a championship tournament, and it's a healthy 64-team field. but let's look at who's in this year:

Pac-10 (8 out of 10 teams): can you believe everyone except Arizona St. and Oregon St. got in? sure, they're a high-caliber conference for volleyball, but Washington St. was 6-12 in conference... really?

4. Stanford (hosting)
6. Washington
8. UCLA (hosting)
9. California
14. Oregon
ur. USC (hosting)
ur. Arizona
ur. Washington St.

Big-10 (6 out of 11 teams): sure you've got Penn St., definately No. 1, but the rest of them are unimpressive. Illinois, the second team in the conference was 16-4 in conference play... does that mean the conference was good or that Illinois was bad? of course Penn St. is good (i would even say "awesome"), but if they're beating everyone up 3-0 in the conference tournament, how can you continue to vouch for those other teams?

1. Penn St. (hosting)
5. Illinois (hosting)
11. Minnesota
13. Michigan (hosting)
ur. Ohio St. (hosting)
ur. Michigan St.

Big-12 (6 out of 12 teams): Baylor, Oklahoma, and Texas A&M all have 11-9 conference records... again, sure the competition is tough... but that's 9 loses... even if you lose to the top 3 teams twice each, that's only 6 loses, where do the other 3 loses come from?

2. Texas (hosting)
7. Iowa St. (hosting)
10. Nebraska (hosting)
ur. Baylor
ur. Oklahoma
ur. Texas A&M

ACC (5 out of 12 teams): how do you give Florida St. a No. 3 seed when they're ranked #14 and none of the other teams in the conference are good enough to warrant a seed? answer = ?? Florida St. was #3 in the RPI and Hawai'i was #22 so I guess that's the reason, but how the heck do they come up with those RPIs?

3. Florida St. (hosting)
ur. Duke
ur. Georgia Tech
ur. Clemson
ur. Miami

so... bottom line. lots of big winners and big losers by the NCAA. but the good news is... it's still a tournament. win and move on, lose and go home. Hawai'i's team this year is really good so I've got no doubt they'll prove those NCAA bastards wrong with that No. 12 seed. so let's take a look at Hawai'i's bracket.

first round at USC
# 16 USC (21-9) vs. Oklahoma (18-11)
New Mexico (20-9) vs. #3/No. 12 Hawai'i (28-2)

New Mexico has loses to Baylor, TCU (twice), #19 Arizona, Tulane, #23 Colorado St. (twice), BYU, and UNLV. quality wins? NONE! Oklahoma also has a bunch of loses to unranked opponents and USC went 4-7 vs. ranked opponents. so you gotta figure USC advances, and then Hawai'i has a tricky match-up playing USC at USC. but Hawai'i beat USC handily last year in the same round of the NCAA tournament, and Hawai'i is much better this year.

so WHEN Hawai'i beats USC, it goes to the regionals at Stanford where they are penciled in to face No. 5 Illinois, who's had a good year, their only loses came to #1 Penn St (twice), #14 Florida St. #13 Minnesota, and Michigan St. still, the way Hawai'i looks, i'm definately calling the "on-paper" upset there (really wouldn't be an upset because in the rankings Hawai'i is #3 and Illinois is #5) but still a great match-up at a neutral court. the winner of that match i'm thinking will take on No. 4 Stanford, who Hawai'i beat earlier this year, but Stanford is not the same team as when Hawai'i beat them 3-0 in september, re: Alix Klineman is healthy. when Hawai'i played Stanford, Klineman (who Hawai'i heavily recruited out of high school) was still coming back from injury, but (as Stanford always seems to do) they have finished the season out strong, capturing the Pac-10 title out-right (over an-equally good Washington team) so that Hawai'i vs. Stanford rematch looks awfully compelling, that's what i'll be wishing for come the second week of december...

as for the rest of the field... Penn St. looks just about unstoppable, but there's a reason why they play the game! that's why i love sports, you still gotta play and even if you're 99.9% favored on paper, you still gotta win, and in a tournament bracket like this, there are no second chances. nevertheless, i'm thinking that Penn St. will win easily the first two rounds, have a tricky match-up vs. Florida at Florida in the regionals, but then run into the winner of California/UCLA in the regional finals, win that, have another tough match against either Hawai'i/Stanford in the final four and then face Texas in the championship match (along the way, I see Texas facing Nebraska and Washington (who beats Minnesota and has a Pac-10 showdown with Oregon in the regional finals after Oregon takes out Florida St.).

there are only 4 teams that i think can take out Penn St (currently on something like a 96-match win streak after winning the NCAA championships the last two years, both over stanford)... Texas, Stanford, Hawai'i, and Washington. Washington has to get through Texas first (assuming Texas handles Nebraska, which i think they will), i think Washington has the serving and backcourt defense to trouble Texas so they've got a shot i think, but then to pick off Texas and them Penn St. will be a tough request. Texas looks almost as awesome as Penn St, Destinee Hooker and Megan Hodge cancel each other out, as does Alisha Glass and Ashley Engle (although in contrasting styles). i think texas' passing is a little more of a weakness than Penn St. and actually they just lost in their last regular season game of the year to unranked Kansas 0-3 (that was a late-surprise) so i still think Penn St has the edge, but in a championship match who knows? Stanford with Klineman ON has a shot at Penn St, although this time it won't be in the championship match. Hawai'i, if it passes money and get all of its' players clicking like it can and has many times during this season, can pull out the upset and go all the way this year i believe (and i've not said that since the kim willoughby days, so you know that's saying something). this year they've got the serving, passing, ball-control, and hitting to take them to the championship. the only thing they've got to worry about is height and blocking. Hawai'i has to work hard against the monsterously tall teams that they'll see in the post-season, but they've got the skill to attack them, it's gonna come down to match-ups and i think if Hawai'i is on it's game, we're gonna have a lot to watch before christmas...

GO BOWS!

ps - update, they interviewed dave shoji during the women's basketball game tonight and he was just as upset as i am (i think jim leahey even a little more). his theory? whoever is making these NCAA decisions are not volleyball people. it seems as if they went strictly by the RPI, not only with seeding, but also with selecting at-large teams. now that i look at it, yup, it looks like they just went right down the RPI list with no thought to who the teams were playing (who's on a "hot streak," what happened in the conference tournaments, etc). so, screw you NCAA (yet again)... but we'll show you... we'll show you all the way to the final four!

GO BOWS!

UPDATE!: on man, how much more upset am i? i just read this article on the NCAA's own website written by a volleyball analyst and even he is blasting the "selection committee" on their tournament decisions! they way the bracket breaks-down, the picks and the seedings closely follow the RPI, just as i've said, but the last RPI rankings produced were on Nov. 22nd... NOT EVEN COUNTING RESULTS FROM THE END OF THE SEASON (and, more importantly, the conference championship tournaments) GAMES THAT WERE PLAYED LAST WEEK! wtf?! how can you completely discount the last week of play and make your selections strictly on rankings from a week earlier? go read that article, at least someone over there has some sense... sheesh.