VBelo Scouting Report: April 24, 2023
The bracket is set
As you likely know, the official NCAA Men’s Volleyball National Tournament bracket was released yesterday.
As projected, Long Beach and Grand Canyon received the at-large bids. In terms of the #2/3 seeds, Hawaiʻi edged out Penn State to get the bye to the semifinals. I wrote yesterday that I thought Penn State was going to get the #2 seed and I was wrong. I sure would have loved to be a fly on the wall during the selection committee discussion.
With the selection committee going with Hawaiʻi, I think that tells us some important things about what they were weighing more. RPI, strength of schedule, and head-to-head seemed to play a lesser role than many, myself included, thought. For RPI, I think this is actually a good thing. It should be considered less important. For strength of schedule, Penn State had a clear advantage and I was mildly surprised this wasn’t more important. Schedule crafting is an art and the Nittany Lions had an incredible one. I was surprised that head-to-head didn’t put Penn State on top, though. If I were Penn State, I would have a small chip on my shoulder about this. They are a great team and I am excited to see the energy and passion they bring to Fairfax.
So what metric was important to the committee? We can’t be 100% sure, but Hawaiʻi did have the clear advantage for record against teams under consideration. This is a slightly quirky category. The general idea is to see how well teams did against the potential national tournament teams. Hawaiʻi had the clear advantage here and I think this carried them to the #2 seed. They also had a better overall record but I don’t expect that it mattered much here.
Now we wait until Sunday (April 30th) for the first Opening Round match against Ohio State and King. Since we have a few days, I am going to take a brief break but I will be back soon with more coverage as we get closer to the national tournament.
Match Recaps
No matches yesterday.
Match Projections
No matches until April 30th.
Hawaii faces different scheduling constraints (logistical and financial) than mainland teams, so that could factor in to the weighting awarded to SOS.