MIVA Tournament Projections

Also it's the last day of regular-season play.

Penn State clinched the EIVA regular-season title with their win over George Mason. (Caleb Craig/Penn State Athletics)

A lot happened yesterday! Here are some quick notes.

• UC Irvine toppled #1 Long Beach. That means that today’s matchup between the two teams will decide the one and two seed in the Big West. Either way, they both get a bye for the conference tournament next weekend.

• At one point in time, every EIVA team was playing in a fifth set. It was wild! Penn State held off a strong George Mason challenge to claim the top seed in the conference. This means they will host the conference tournament, and we all know how important home court can be.

• Lincoln Memorial and Thomas More will go at it today for the first conference championship of the year over in the IVA. LMU is the heavy favorite, but don’t count out the home team just yet. This could be a fun one.

• Over in the NEC, we know the six teams for the conference tournament. The one seed will definitely be Saint Francis. I haven’t gamed out all of the possibilities but there are definitely seedings up for grabs. I love it when it comes down to the wire.

• Morehouse got their first win in program history. It was only a matter of time and they did it in dramatic fashion. I can’t wait to see more and more of these wins from the Maroon Tigers.

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MIVA Tournament Projections

Methodology

For all tournament projections, I run the seeds through 50,000 simulations to see how often each team reaches each round. This is probably more than the necessary amount of simulations, but it doesn’t take very long so I am sticking with 50,000. I use VBelo projections to determine the chances of winning each match. In the end, I counted how many times, out of 50,000, each team won the tournament.

Results

Yet again, the MIVA has shown the country that it is arguably the most competitive conference for NCAA D-I/II Men’s Volleyball. I’ll be honest, I was a little surprised by these results. Ohio State comes into the tournament with the highest VBelo rating of any MIVA team, but they are the third most likely to win the tournament. Ball State is the opposite: third in VBelo but most likely to win the tournament.

There is one, very simple reason: home court. For 2024, the MIVA changed their tournament slightly to favor higher-seeded teams even more. After each round, the teams are reseeded. This means that Ball State, as the one seed, will always face the lowest-seeded opponent as long as they are in the tournament and they will always play at home. This makes the normal bracket visual less helpful since teams can move around.

Since the national tournament is so small (don’t get me started), I think this change is completely reasonable. The MIVA will likely only have one team make the national tournament and the conference wants to better reward regular-season performance. It is a shame when one bad match or amazing upset completely derails an amazing season. If the tournament was bigger, this would be less of an issue, but until that happens this feels like a good place to land.

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Match Recaps

Big West

Hawai'i (86%) def. UC San Diego (14%)
3-1 (25-20, 25-16, 12-25, 25-20)

UC Santa Barbara (60%) def. CSU Northridge (40%)
3-1 (26-28, 25-21, 25-14, 25-19)

UC Irvine (27%) def. Long Beach (73%)
3-0 (25-17, 25-21, 25-21)

EIVA

Charleston (19%) def. Princeton (81%)
3-2 (25-16, 19-25, 25-23, 18-25, 15-12)

Penn State (80%) def. George Mason (20%)
3-2 (22-25, 25-13, 23-25, 25-18, 15-13)

NJIT (28%) def. Harvard (72%)
3-2 (25-23, 24-26, 21-25, 27-25, 15-11)

IVA

Thomas More (45%) def. Maryville (55%)
3-2 (25-18, 18-25, 22-25, 25-20, 18-16)

Lincoln Memorial (93%) def. Tusculum (7%)
3-0 (25-17, 25-13, 25-20)

MPSF

Grand Canyon (82%) def. Pepperdine (18%)
3-0 (25-22, 25-23, 25-20)

Stanford (68%) def. Southern California (32%)
3-0 (25-19, 25-19, 25-23)

NEC

Daemen (85%) def. Merrimack (15%)
3-1 (25-21, 25-16, 24-26, 25-14)

Sacred Heart (36%) def. D'Youville (64%)
3-0 (25-22, 25-22, 25-23)

Saint Francis (89%) def. Fairleigh Dickinson (11%)
3-0 (25-10, 25-18, 25-21)

SIAC

Morehouse (10%) def. Benedict (90%)
3-2 (25-16, 12-25, 20-25, 25-21, 15-13)

Central State (73%) def. Kentucky State (27%)
3-1 (21-25, 25-20, 25-22, 25-15)

Fort Valley State (52%) def. Edward Waters (48%)
3-1 (25-20, 17-25, 25-17, 25-18)

Match Projections

IVA Tournament

Third Place Match

#2 Maryville (71%) vs #4 Tusculum (29%)

First Place Match

#1 Lincoln Memorial (84%) vs #3 Thomas More (16%)

MIVA Tournament

Quarterfinals

#8 Queens (7%) vs #1 Ball State (93%)

#6 Lewis (24%) vs #3 Ohio State (76%)

#5 Purdue Fort Wayne (35%) vs #4 Lindenwood (65%)

#7 McKendree (20%) vs #2 Loyola Chicago (80%)

Big West

Hawai'i (87%) vs UC San Diego (13%)

UC Santa Barbara (52%) vs CSU Northridge (48%)

UC Irvine (24%) vs Long Beach (76%)

ECC

American International (11%) vs St. Thomas Aquinas (89%)

Roberts Wesleyan (31%) vs Dominican (69%)

EIVA

Charleston (29%) vs Princeton (71%)

George Mason (17%) vs Penn State (83%)

NJIT (39%) vs Harvard (61%)

MPSF

Concordia (1%) vs UCLA (99%)

Southern California (28%) vs Stanford (72%)

NEC

Sacred Heart (13%) vs Daemen (87%)

Merrimack (50%) vs D'Youville (50%)

Fairleigh Dickinson (11%) vs Saint Francis (89%)