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The gap has shrunken and plenty has changed, and still can change, in college men’s volleyball bracketology.
Off the Block each week during the rest of the regular season and throughout each round of the postseason will unveil its latest detailed projections to the NCAA Tournament.
The men’s volleyball Division I-II NCAA Tournament is comprised of six teams. Automatic bids are awarded to the winners of the Conference Carolinas, EIVA, MIVA and MPSF conference tournaments, and the NCAA men’s volleyball committee selects two teams for at-large bids.
The three-person selection committee meets following all of the conference tournaments to decide the at-large teams and the tournament seeding. For an in-depth look at the criteria used by the selection committee and the Off the Block bracketology projections, check out this breakdown.
The field for the NCAA Tournament is scheduled to be released during Selection Sunday on April 23.
The NCAA Tournament will begin with the two play-in matches and the two-top seeds earning byes to the NCAA Tournament semifinals.
Off the Block is in its seventh season of college men’s volleyball bracketology. It has in previous seasons accurately projected 93 percent of the teams in the NCAA Tournament field.
NCAA TOURNAMENT PROJECTIONS
FIRST FOUR OUT
UC Irvine (16-6)
UCLA (16-7)
Lewis (20-6)
Loyola (14-8)
Quick hits: Yes, Ohio State suffered a loss earlier this week, but it still maintains the No. 1 overall seed in the bracketology. The gap between Ohio State and both Long Beach State and BYU is just now extremely narrow. The Buckeyes entered the week holding a .0089 point edge against the Cougars for the top spot in the RPI rankings and will likely maintain the No. 1 ranking with two victories this weekend. In addition, Ohio State continues to hold the advantage against Long Beach State in several criteria categories, including RPI, strength of schedule rankings and head-to-head record. Hawai’i also keeps an advantage over UC Irvine for the final at-large bid. If Hawai’i loses one or two matches in its upcoming series versus No. 6/6 UCLA next week, though, UC Irvine has an opportunity to move into the NCAA Tournament field. With its upset victory against Ohio State, Penn State has solidified the No. 5 seed compared to any Conference Carolinas team. A Conference Carolinas team could still earn the No. 5 seed if a team besides Penn State wins the EIVA championship.