Welcome to the VBelo Preseason Report for the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SIAC)! In this 8-part series, we will look at the state of Men’s Volleyball as we begin the 2023 NCAA season. Each conference profile will give a quick overview of how those teams look as they head into their 2023 campaign.
If you want to see the other conference profiles, I will update links as they are released:
Preseason Ranking
Disclaimer
VBelo only knows the information that is fed into it. Since there have been zero matches in 2023 so far, it doesn’t have a complete picture of teams yet. The best it can do is see where a team finished last season and adjust for players lost in the offseason. The model will learn more about these teams the same way we all will: seeing who wins matches. While these preseasons rankings don’t foretell where the teams will end the season (it can’t predict the future), it shows us where VBelo thinks they are starting from relative to the rest of the nation.
So let’s get to it! Here is how the SIAC teams stack up for the new season.
It is no surprise that Central State comes out on top.1 Not only did they win the regular season championship, but they followed that by winning the inaugural SIAC tournament. The major difference with this Central State team is that they will be led by a new head coach. Edward Waters saw some significant growth last season and they will look to avenge their 5-set loss in the SIAC championship match.
Benedict and Fort Valley are only separated by a few elo points. If one of them can break through to really challenge the top two teams, SIAC conference play will get really interesting. Kentucky State made a statement with its schedule this year by having 30 regular season matches lined up! Morehouse had a really rough first season as they were winless in their 19 matches. To help them turn their fortunes around, Morehouse has brought in a new head coach in Dr. Ashley Johnson.
Roster Retention
To help make sense of the Roster Retention scores above, here is a deep dive into how this metric is calculated.
With so many teams returning so many players, I would expect to see some improved chemistry coming from these second year programs. Unlike every other conference, the SIAC is stacked with returning players. Three teams (Central State, Benedict, & Kentucky State) return every player who entered a match last year.2 Fort Valley and Edward Waters will only be missing one player each from last season! Even Morehouse with a Retention Metric of 0.33 is below the overall average of 0.38.
Obviously, this level of retention is not sustainable for much longer. All of these teams will have to figure out how to recruit to set themselves up for years to come. But that is why the coaches get the big bucks.
Watchlist
Here are some interesting story lines and things to watch for this season:
Central State - How dominant will they be this year? Can they sneak into the top 25 VBelo rankings?
Morehouse - I’m calling it now. Morehouse not only wins their first set, but their first match this year.
New Coaches - With multiple new head coaches in the conference, it will be interesting to see how the SIAC continues to evolve. I won’t be surprised if the SIAC starts to turn into a breeding ground for new coaches that move onto more established programs after seeing some success.
Ras Jesse Delancy (Benedict) - Led SIAC in kills per set with 3.67. This was good enough for 17th overall in the country!
Conclusion
This second year conference is in a good spot to see growth this year. My biggest concern has nothing to do with the players or the coaches, but with the data. Two of these programs do not have readily available stats so I hope this is not a reflection of the effort and investment these institutions are putting into these new programs. Overall, Men’s Volleyball is a better place because the SIAC is here and I can’t wait for them to topple some Goliaths in the future.
I couldn’t find a SIAC preseason poll, but I would be shocked if Central State wasn’t the favorite if the coaches were polled.
Important note: If a player redshirted last year and left, they won’t show up in this calculation.