VBelo Scouting Report: April 19, 2022

Conference tournament mania!

Apr 19, 2022

All of the brackets are set and post season volleyball is well underway. There are 29 teams left playing for just 5 guaranteed spots in the NCAA National Championship. Then there are two two at-large spots which are highly dependent on how these tournaments play out and if there are any upsets in the finals. Most teams and fans are all playing “what if…” games in their heads, and for good reason. The post season is all about believing that there is a chance, even if it is a slim chance.

I didn’t have time to put together models for the IVA or SIAC (which I am sad about), but they are both worth mentioning because they have drastically different tournament formats than the other conferences. The IVA has a 3-game guarantee bracket so every team gets to play multiple post season matches. The SIAC has a super awesome double-elimination bracket (that more conferences should really consider.) Respect to IVA and SIAC for breaking the mold.

You aren’t here for all these words though, let’s be honest. You are here for the projections, so let’s get to them!

Conference Tournament Projections

For each conference, I ran their tournament (including home courts, seedings, and matchups) through VBelo 50,000 times. I know that sounds like a lot, but computers are fast at doing things like that. Fifty thousand is enough times to gives us a really good sense of what is most likely to happen while still leaving room for those unlikely scenarios. Below are the round-by-round probabilities from those simulations.

Big West

This is the only tournament where the 1 seed isn’t the favorite and that is because of home court advantage. Hawai’i is a good team, but playing on ‘Oahu is a huge boost to their odds. It seems that the model thinks that rivals Hawai’i and Long Beach will meet in the finals, which is a recipe for some high level volleyball.

Conference Carolinas

With the opening round in the books, North Greenville and King are still comfortably enjoying their 2-round-byes. Three seed Mount Olive hosts the semis and finals and have a higher elo rating than King so they find themselves with the second best odds to win the tournament. Overall, the top three seeds all have between a 20% and 40% chance of winning so this tournament is far from decided.

EIVA

This is Penn State’s tournament to lose. There is no real way around that. They have dominated conference play this year and VBelo has no good reason to believe that this tournament will be any different.

MIVA

Those quarterfinals were something else. Purdue Fort Wayne1 with the upset and Lewis just surviving is completely on-brand for the MIVA this year. Ball State is still the favorite, but Loyola is not that far behind. At this point, I would almost believe it if you told me McKendree still had a chance somehow because that is how crazy this season has been.

MPSF

No surprise here, UCLA is the strong favorite to win the MPSF tournament. What is a surprise is how sharp the drop off is after them. No one else has a 15% chance of winning, which is wild for such a strong conference. Although, the gap between UCLA and the rest of the conference suggests that the MPSF may not be the powerhouse many consider it to be. VBelo would not be shocked to see only 1 MPSF team in the national tournament this year.