VBelo Scouting Report: April 13, 2023
IVA Tournament Projections and the ConfCarolinas regular season finale
Volleyball is back! After 4 long days, teams are back on the court with their eyes set on the postseason. For some that means conference tournaments while others have the national tournament in the back of their mind.
Today we have 1 SIAC match, 2 MPSF matches, and 4 ConfCarolinas matches. This is also the last day of the Conference Carolinas regular season. North Greenville already has the top spot secured, but the second spot is very much up for grabs. There are 3 teams tied for second and anyone of them could grab the #2 seed for the conference tournament. Lots of drama could be in store for this conference finale.
Meanwhile in the MPSF, we have two intriguing matches. UCLA already has the #1 seed locked up, but continuing their winning ways will help their RPI and their potential seeding for the national tournament. Pepperdine has a chance at the #2 seed but they will need to defeat UCLA twice, no easy feat. The other match is between the bottom two teams in the conference: Concordia1 and USC. This looks to be a close match as both of these teams have wins over ranked opponents but have struggled most of the season. VBelo has this as a virtual tossup with a slight edge to the visiting Trojans.
But enough about today’s matches, because I want to make sure the IVA gets some love. Since Independent teams don’t have an automatic bid to the national tournament, their postseason doesn’t get a ton of attention. This is a shame, particularly for Lincoln Memorial who is putting together another strong season at 20-4. I want to live in a world where they get to the national tournament too! But enough of my soapbox, let’s look at their conference tournament!
IVA Tournament Projections
Methodology
For each tournament, I run a simulated version of the matches through VBelo. In total, I run 50,000 simulations to capture a complete picture of the likely outcomes. The code counts each time a team advances to the next round and if they eventually win the tournament. After counting all of the outcomes, we are able to see how likely each tournament outcome is (in a percentage).
Tournament Format
The IVA has the same format as the Big West, if you are familiar with that. The top 2 seeds each get a bye to the semifinals. The remaining seeds (3-6) play in quarterfinal matches. All matches are played at a single host and this year that is Queens University (also the 2 seed).
Projections
That’s enough prologue, let’s get to the fun stuff.
This is a two-team race. Lincoln Memorial will be looking for their 5th straight IVA tournament championship, which is just pure domination. VBelo gives them a 58% change of winning it all! The team most likely to stop them is the host team, Queens. Outside of these two teams, no one has more than a 10% chance and 3 teams have a 1% or less chance. The fact that both of these teams have byes definitely helps, but they are also the two strongest teams in the conference.
It should be noted that the teams that win their first round match have to play the #1 or #2 seed on the same day. The model doesn’t factor this fatigue into the projections, but I can’t imagine it helps any team not named LMU or Queens.
Match Recaps
No matches yesterday.
Match Projections
ConfCarolinas
Emmanuel (33%) vs Erskine (67%)
Mount Olive (69%) vs Barton (31%)
Lees-McRae (22%) vs King (78%)
North Greenville (63%) vs Belmont Abbey (37%)
MPSF
Southern California (56%) vs Concordia (44%)
UCLA (77%) vs Pepperdine (23%)
SIAC
Edward Waters (68%) vs Fort Valley State (32%)
Non-conference
Carolina (30%) vs Benedict (70%)
Tweet of the Day
I recently learned that the proper styling for this school is Concordia University Irvine or Concordia. Concordia-Irvine is not the business. (Concordia Style Guide)