First Full Week in the Books
First Full Week in the Books
And what a week it has been! Still a few matches today but we get a breather tomorrow.
So much to take in from today’s matches. Because of the holiday weekend, I haven’t had time to dive too deep into everything that happened. I do know that there were several VBelo upsets. Lewis hosted BYU and handed the Cougars their first loss of the season. VBelo had the Flyers as 37% underdogs. We also had NJIT get the 5-set win at home against Purdue Fort Wayne as 29% underdogs. These are the types of matches that keep the early season interesting from the outset.
On a quick note, I manually enter all scores into the VBelo database. I want to automate this process but my biggest hurdle at this point is the reliability of the data from the NCAA. It is usually ideal and has gotten better in the past few years. But today is a perfect example of why I can’t rely on it 100% just yet. This is what NCAA Stats shows (12+ hours after the match) as the score for Mount Olive vs Roanoke today.
I was skeptical of that first set for obvious reasons. It turns out that Mount Olive won the first set 25-21. No one had this information (including the schools’ websites). Thankfully, there was a publicly available video of the match. I watched (at a very fast speed) to confirm the scores for this match. (Sets 2 & 3 were correct already.)
I bring this up to let you all know that I want to make sure that the volleyball community has access to the best data. If you spot errors, please let me know. I know I’m not perfect. Hopefully, the extra step of hunting down some of these scores brings someone a little bit of joy. I know it brings me some.
Match Recaps
JBJ Battle for the Boardwalk
Belmont Abbey (58%) def. Sacred Heart (42%)
3-0 (25-20, 25-21, 25-19)
Barton (65%) def. St. Thomas Aquinas (35%)
3-0 (26-24, 25-20, 25-18)
Fairleigh Dickinson (78%) def. St. Thomas Aquinas (22%)
3-0 (25-18, 25-12, 25-20)
Barton (31%) def. Sacred Heart (69%)
3-2 (25-23, 25-23, 21-25, 21-25, 15-8)
Macon Invitational
Mount Olive (83%) def. Randolph-Macon (17%)
3-0 (25-13, 25-16, 25-14)
Mount Olive (88%) def. Roanoke College (12%)
3-0 (25-21, 25-10, 25-11)
Non-conference
Long Beach (89%) def. Saint Francis (11%)
3-1 (25-21, 25-20, 21-25, 25-16)
UC Irvine (54%) def. Princeton (46%)
3-1 (20-25, 25-17, 25-19, 25-18)
Stanford (66%) def. UC Santa Barbara (34%)
3-1 (25-22, 24-26, 25-23, 25-21)
Ohio State (91%) def. UC San Diego (9%)
3-2 (24-26, 25-20, 21-25, 25-11, 15-11)
Penn State (95%) def. King (5%)
3-0 (25-16, 25-19, 25-16)
NJIT (29%) def. Purdue Fort Wayne (71%)
3-2 (24-26, 23-25, 25-14, 27-25, 15-7)
Southern California (32%) def. Lincoln Memorial (68%)
3-1 (25-21, 20-25, 25-23, 25-18)
Maryville (89%) def. Kentucky State (11%)
3-0 (25-11, 25-17, 25-16)
Ball State (97%) def. Tusculum (3%)
3-0 (25-14, 25-16, 25-15)
Lewis (37%) def. BYU (63%)
3-2 (25-16, 25-23, 16-25, 11-25, 15-13)
UCLA (87%) def. Loyola Chicago (13%)
3-0 (25-20, 25-19, 25-21)
Pepperdine (62%) def. Long Island (38%)
3-1 (25-23, 22-25, 25-14, 25-16)
Match Projections
Non-conference
Lees-McRae (11%) vs Charleston (89%)
Lincoln Memorial (55%) vs Pepperdine (45%)
Dominican University (IL) (16%) vs Missouri S&T (84%)
Lindenwood (14%) vs Grand Canyon (86%)