Ball State and Bowling Green, the respective MAC division winners, won their conference tournament semifinal matches Monday and play for the the league’s title and automatic NCAA bid Tuesday. Bowling Green has an NCAA RPI of 53 and Ball State is at 56, so it’s highly unlikely but not impossible that the loser could get an at-large bid.
Evansville and UIC won their Missouri Valley matches Monday and moved into Tuesday’s semifinals. Top-seeded Northern Iowa plays Evansville and second-seeded Drake faces UIC. The final is Wednesday.
The big match Wednesday won’t decide the West Coast Conference title — second-ranked San Diego has a two-game lead — but anytime the Toreros play No. 18 BYU it matters. The match is on ESPNU at 10 p.m. Eastern. San Diego (26-1, 17-0, 9 RPI)) has won 23 in a row, including a sweep over visiting BYU (21-5, 15-2, 27 RPI) on October 21.
Also in the WCC, two other teams hopeful of at-large bids are in action when Loyola Marymount (40 RPI) is home for Gonzaga and Pepperdine (43 RPI) entertains Portland. Pacific plays at San Francisco and Santa Clara is at Saint Mary’s.
There is one Pac-12 match when UCLA (62 RPI) goes to No. 25 Washington State (34 RPI).
The lone Big West match has UC Santa Barbara home for CSUN. UCSB trails Hawai’i by two games with two left. Hawai’i plays at UCSB, so UCSB has to win out and then hope that Hawai’i loses at CSUN on Saturday. If Hawai’i (37 RPI) wins there won’t be an at-large from the Big West.
Want to watch a match? We have the viewing links on the VolleyballMag.com TV & Streaming Listings page.
AVCA POLL: The top four teams — Texas, San Diego, Wisconsin, Louisville — stayed the same, but Ohio State took a fall three spots to No. 8.
Nebraska moved up a spot to No. 5, Stanford leapfrogged Pittsburgh to No. 6, and Pitt stayed No. 7. Minnesota stayed No. 10 and Oregon jumped two spots to No. 10.
No one dropped out and there was no significant movement.
Click here for the complete AVCA Division I Coaches Poll.
AVCA POW: The AVCA national player of the week is Indiana’s Camryn Haworth. The sophoore setter directed her team to five-set wins over Northwestern and at then-No. 5 Ohio State and in those matches averaged 8.2 assists, 1.8 kills and 2.7 digs per set. she had seven blocks against Northwestern and four against Ohio State, one solo.
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