NCAA Men’s Volleyball Tournament Preview

Above: Loyola is the top seed, playing at home, with a golden opportunity for a National Championship this weekend.

The regular season and conference tournaments are over, and the field is set for the NCAA Men’s Volleyball Tournament beginning Tuesday night, April 29 at Loyola’s Gentile Arena. Besides just serving as a gracious host for the 2014 national championship—which would be remarkable in itself– Loyola also happens to be the top overall seed in the tournament and playing out every extraordinary fantasy of a storybook season.

After compiling a 27-1 season, with a 25-match winning streak, perfect in conference and undefeated on the road, the Ramblers were selected as the top seed in the tournament.

BYU, the MPSF regular season and conference champion earned the #2 seed. Stanford University earned the top at-large birth and the #3 seed, while EIVA Champion Penn State was seeded 5th and Conference Carolinas Champion received a 6th seed. The controversial pick was MIVA runner up Lewis, who received the #4 seed—the first Midwestern team to receive an at large bid in the tournament in over 20 years.

As the top two seeds, Loyola and BYU will receive a bye into the semifinals beginning on Thursday, May 1. The two play-in matches take place on Tuesday, with the winner of the Stanford/Erskine match facing BYU and the winner of the Lewis/Penn State match facing Loyola.

If these opponents sound familiar to Loyola fans, it’s because they are. The Ramblers defeated BYU 3-0 at Gentile Arena in early January. They defeated visiting Erskine 3-0 in mid-January. Loyola beat visiting Penn State 3-1 in mid-March. And in three meetings with Lewis, Loyola won both regular season conference games and the MIVA Tournament Final by the score of 3-1 each time. So the Ramblers have a combined 6-0 record against four of the other five participants.

Lewis has a history this year against many of these teams as well. The Flyers beat BYU 3-1 in January, and lost 3-1 at Stanford. Lewis beat Erskine and lost to Penn State, both at home. BYU and Stanford have faced each other three times this season with the Cougars topping the Cardinal in all three matches, including last Saturday’s MPSF conference tournament final in Provo.

From a Loyola fan’s perspective, the stars seem aligned for a national championship. The Ramblers are on their home court, riding a longer winning streak than any other team in the sport has wins, having already defeated all but one of the other participants, and having experienced NCAA tournament play a just a year ago. But it’s been a long, hard road to the place they’re in right now.

Loyola began playing men’s volleyball in 1996, and within just a few years challenged for a spot in the NCAA Tournament. In 2001, 2002, and 2003, the Ramblers reached the MIVA Championship game—three sets away from reaching the national championship, only to lose 3-0 each time to Ohio State, Ball State, and Lewis. In 2005 and 2006, the top-seeded Ramblers were upset at home by IPFW in the semifinals and finals, respectively. In 2007, third seeded Loyola was eliminated by IPFW in the semifinals again, this time at a neutral site.

In 2010 and again in 2011, Loyola reached the conference tournament final as a two seed, only to lose at Ohio State. In 2012 it was Lewis that beat the #3 seed Ramblers in the final in Romeoville.

But in 2013, just a few days after Loyola was announced as the newest member of the Missouri Valley Conference, the years of frustration at being bridesmaid came to an end. Loyola beat their nemesis and rival Lewis on the road in five games for a berth in the NCAA Tournament.

Loyola went down in the NCAA semifinal in three straight sets last year against eventual champion UC Irvine, but they got valuable experience of the NCAA Tournament spotlight and won a difficult road match in the MIVA final to erase many years of frustration. With the tantalizing pathway to a national championship laid out so perfectly, the Ramblers have to bear down and seize it, because it will never get this easy ever again.

In my analysis, the biggest and most imposing barrier to a Loyola victory in the tournament is Stanford. Not to look past Lewis, who has a phenomenal All-American player in Geoff Powell, but if the Cardinal get past BYU for the first time in four meetings, Loyola might have some serious problems in the final.

I have never been a believer in BYU, at least outside of Provo. BYU cleaned up at home in the high altitude with the largest average home attendance in men’s volleyball, going undefeated and earning 14 of their 21 victories. In spite of winning the MPSF Tournament very convincingly on the home court, the Cougars have a four-game road losing streak, and have to be the first #2 seed in NCAA tournament history to have an overall losing record (7-8) on the road. Four of BYU’s road victories came against the dregs of the MPSF, who combined for a 21-88 overall record. So essentially, BYU was 3-8 on the road against winning teams, and the teams they’ll face in the tournament are better than average winning teams.

Unfortunately for Stanford, one of BYU’s road wins against a good team came against the Cardinal. Nevertheless, Stanford finished extremely strong against every team that didn’t have BYU on their jerseys. Before their closer than it appeared loss to BYU in Provo in the MPSF Final, the Cardinal had reeled off 24 consecutive wins.

So here’s how I see it playing out: Stanford beats Erskine and Penn State beats Lewis on Tuesday. BYU defeats Stanford by the narrowest of margins on Thursday, and Loyola beats Penn State. That sets up a Loyola-BYU final on Saturday. I say Loyola loses the first set to BYU, putting a scare in the hometown crowd. But the Ramblers regroup to win 3-1 or 3-2 for the National Championship.

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