VBelo Scouting Report: April 23, 2023

Selection Sunday

Apr 23, 2023

It was a championship packed Saturday as 6 teams won their conference tournaments. Special shoutout to Long Island for winning the inaugural NEC Tournament. Also huge congratulations to Head Coach Kai Dugquem on leading the Sharks to the big win. As a reminder, Coach Dugquem was promoted to Head Coach less than 2 months before the season started! Job well done.

Now for the automatic qualifiers for the National Tournament. King put in a strong performance at home to upset North Greenville for the Conference Carolina spot. The other #1 seed to fall was Ball State to Ohio State in the MIVA. In terms of VBelo, this was the biggest underdog win of the day. Both the Conference Carolinas and the MIVA were projected to only get one team in the national tournament, so these matches look to be the end of the season for North Greenville and Ball State. Tremendous season from both of these programs.

Over in the Big West, EIVA, and MPSF, the favorites took care of business. This was great because it avoided the chaos scenario where the selection committee would be forced to pick only 2 out of the top 3 teams to make the national tournament. I think almost all of us can be glad about that.

Tournament Bracket Projection

At this point, we know 5 of the 7 teams and the 2 at-large teams look to be a fairly clear choice. Looking at RPI, the two teams to get in will be Long Beach and Grand Canyon. RPI is only one of the criteria that the selection committee uses but these two teams seem to stand out. This will give the Big West and MPSF two teams each in the national tournament.

Full RPI List

In terms of seeding, the NCAA only gives a seed to #1 and #2. This is weird to me because we can all clearly see what seed all of the other teams would get. For the sake of this conversation, I am going to give them all seeds because it’s clearer.

In terms of seeding, I think #1 and #4-7 are set.

UCLA
[Penn State or Hawaiʻi]
[Penn State or Hawaiʻi]
Long Beach
Grand Canyon
Ohio State
King

The big question mark is who will get the #2 seed and the bye to the semifinals. This comes down to splitting hairs between Penn State and Hawaiʻi.

Hawaiʻi and Penn State have 2 incredible resumes. Hawaiʻi has the better overall record (28-2 to 26-3) and a better record against common opponents (15-1 to 8-2). Penn State’s resume includes a higher RPI (see above), strength of schedule (6 to 17), and they won the season series 1-0. This is super close but I think the committee ends up going with Penn State at #2 and Hawaiʻi at #3.

Here is what that would look like.1

We will find out in a matter of hours how the selection committee decides to seed the national tournament. Tune in to the NCAA Selection Show Sunday (today) at 1 pm ET to find out what the tournament will look like.