Tuesday, April 29 (match times 6 & 8 p.m. CT)
(3) Stanford vs. (6) Erskine - TBD
(4) Lewis vs. (5) Penn State - TBD

Thursday, May 1 (streamed live on NCAA.com)
(2) BYU vs. Stanford/Erskine - 6 p.m.
(1) Loyola vs. Lewis/Penn State - 8 p.m.

Saturday, May 3 (ESPNU)
Semifinal winners - 7 p.m.

Very surprised that Lewis made the field as an at large instead of a West Coast team. True, they had a better won-loss record, but they were ranked 11th in the last AVCA poll. (new poll comes out tomorrow.)

What is the breakdown of the committee who chooses the at large teams? I know the polls are generally biased towards the West Coast teams, but I wonder if for this they were hesitant to give both at large bids to the same conference

Don't know how the selection process worked, but I am worried about Lewis. If we face them in the semis in would be the 4th time this year. It's tough to beat any fairly evenly matched team 4 times in a row, and I'm sure they will have a good complement of fans at Gentile too. I'd much rather face Penn State in the semis. They're young, and might be a little overawed by being there.

Interesting side note.

Stanford has a player, Denny Falls, whose father (also Denny) went to Loyola. I knew Denny and roomed with his brother Donny for a year. Donny had a son Colin who was the starting shooting guard for Notre Dame's basketball team a few years ago.

It's slightly different than the men's basketball selection process. Here's a blog post from Off The Block that outlines criteria:

http://www.offtheblockblog.com/2014/04/ ... riteria-2/

One of the big problems with volleyball seeding is the fact that the MPSF (the west coast superconference) plays very few matches outside of conference. They are also not apt to schedule road games. This year threw a lot of the conventional wisdom out the window when BYU came to Chicago and lost pretty convincingly to both Loyola and Lewis. In fact, between Loyola and Lewis, MPSF teams had a losing record.

The top candidate against Lewis for the last at-large bid was Pepperdine, who didn't play a single out of conference game. They just depended on the article of faith that West Coast teams are vastly superior to the rest of the country, and when the top MPSF team blew two matches in the midwest (their only two against non-conference foes), it completely undermined their argument that their conference is inherently superior.

Lewis didn't really have any bad losses. They lost to IPFW in a close one on the road, against EIVA champ Penn State at home, against Stanford on the road, against UC Irvine at home, and three times to Loyola. Pepperdine had a great record, but they were 1-4 against the top two teams in their league, with their single victory a 3-2 squeaker at home against BYU. Lewis was 1-1 against the top two MPSF teams.