It took me about 6 months to figure out that we moved to a new site.

Anyway, as most of us can probably agree, polls mean squat for the most part. That said, the AVCA preseason poll for men's volleyball just came out yesterday and Loyola is ranked 7th... the highest in the program's history. When I first saw the poll, I was thinking that 8th was the highest they were ever ranked. This was confirmed by the AVCA record book.

http://www.avca.org/divisions/men/1-2-poll-12-11-13/

http://www.avca.org/includes/media/docs ... ecords.pdf

The Road to Gentile in May starts January 2 as Loyola takes on 2-time defending champions UC-Irvine at Gentile.

It's rare that the West Coast schools come to the Midwest, so this will be a good chance to see how we perform before a home crowd. We also have BYU and USC on the schedule in early January. The main thing will be winning the MIVA, because a West Coast team will get the at-large bid. Not making it back to the Final Four will waste probably our only opportunity for using the home court advantage to earn a National Championship.

Take care of business and we're in. But if we don't there's still a chance with the field expanding to 6 teams this year. 4 automatics and 2 at-larges. My gut tells me that if Loyola doesn't win the MIVA, they still need a strong regular season to be considered for one of the two at-larges. 2-1 against the west coast is a good start so far.

Are you saying that there will be six teams in the final four?

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The "the field expanding to 6 teams" means the NCAA has added 2 teams to the Men's Volleyball Tournament. In the last year, Conference Carolinas was awarded an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament starting in 2014 (which was essentially a Final Four previously with 3 automatics and 1 at-large). So the tournament expanded to 5 teams. The NCAA a few months later decided to add a 2nd at-large bid which now makes the field 6 teams.

Only the top 2 teams have a bye into the Final Four. The rest play a quarterfinal/play-in match.

http://www.offtheblockblog.com/2013/10/ ... expansion/

Interesting. Thanks.

Sounds like holding on to that #1 or #2 ranking is very important!

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