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Off the Block selected the top seniors in college men’s volleyball and seeded them into a bracket, and it is up to the fans to determine who should win the 2020 Top of the Class Tournament.
The Top of the Class Tournament is a bracket-style, five-round event pairing the best seniors from NCAA Division I-II men’s volleyball teams against each other. The senior in each match-up who had the best college career as decided by the fans will advance to the next round.
The tournament concludes today with the regional finals. Online voting for these first-round matches will end at 10 p.m. (CST) Tuesday.
Off the Block was established in 2011 and is the nation’s leaders in college men’s volleyball coverage.
Check out the championship ballot below.
[crowdsignal poll=10528129]
Rado Parapunov, Hawai’i (2017-2020)
Career stats: 986 kills (3.57 kills per game), .349 attack percentage, 91 aces (0.33 aces per game), 212 blocks (0.77 blocks per game).
Achievements/honors: 2019 Bryan Ivie Award winner, 2019 International Player of the Year, 2019 First-Team All-American, 2019 First-Team All-Big West, 2019 NCAA All-Tournament Team, 2018 All-Big West Honorable Mention, 2017 Freshman All-MPSF
Player bio: Parapunov finished last season in the nation’s top 10 with both a 4.07 kills per game average and a .420 attack percentage as he helped the Rainbow Warriors reach the NCAA Tournament finals. The opposite in 2020 was second in the nation averaging 4.47 kills per game and in the nation’s top 15 hitting .377 and led Hawai’i to the No. 1 national ranking for the majority of the shortened season.
Jackson Gilbert, North Greenville (Coker 2017; North Greenville 2018-20)
Career stats: 953 kills, 162 blocks, 114 aces, 322 digs
Achievements/honors: 2019 Second-Team All-ConfCarolinas, 2018 Third-Team All-ConfCarolinas
Player bio: Gilbert in his senior season was third in the ConfCarolinas with a 3.68 kills per game average, including a team-high 18 kills on a .341 attack percentage in an upset victory against No. 10/9 Grand Canyon. He also was sixth in the conference with 3.29 kills per game average in 2019 and helped lead the Crusaders to their first postseason victory in program history. Along with his offensive performance, Gilbert in 2020 had a conference-best 0.63 aces per game average — his second straight season in the ConfCarolinas top 10 for aces.
Ben Hamsho, North Greenville (2017-20)
Career stats: 630 kills, 80 aces, 116 digs, 0.76 blocks per game
Achievements/honors: Led 2020 North Greenville in aces per game, blocks per game and attack percentage
Player bio: Hamsho in his senior season was among the nation’s leaders with career-best .309 attack percentage. Among his top performances that season included a season-high 14 kills in an upset victory against No. 10/9 Grand Canyon. The middle attacker also had at least 50 blocks in all four seasons, including being in the ConfCarolinas top 15 last season with a 0.80 blocks per game average.
Don Thompson, Emmanuel (2017-20)
Career stats: 930 kills (2.68 kills per game), .315 attack percentage, 265 digs, 211 blocks
Achievements/honors: 2019 Second-Team All-ConfCarolinas
Player bio: Thompson was among the ConfCarolinas and national leaders in 2020 with a 3.47 kills per game average, including having a career-high 33 kills in a five-game victory against Limestone in January. The senior played middle attacker and opposite throughout his career and hit more than .300 in each of his first three seasons. He also was in the conference’s top 10 with a 0.81 blocks per game average in 2019.
I voted when the polls opened at 1:04am. I tried to vote again at 2:05. It keeps saying that my vote is already counted, but I know for certain that I have not voted again.
I have at least 2 other family members having the same issue.
Several family members who have not been able to cast votes since their first one at 1:00 am-ish EST. This happened several times in previous rounds, but we always assumed we might have lost track of our timing. That’s obviously not the case here.
Mr. Parapunov
It is allowing me to vote over and over again without waiting an hour. And when I did it a couple of times to confirm it was doing this the person I voted for dropped each time and others went up. And it was pretty quick between my voting. Just want to make aware and concern others have this issue and not counting to the right person.
Were in able to vote as well it’s been 1 1/2 hrs since I voted last and it just says we’ve already counted your vote
I’m getting texts, calls and posts from all of our voters and the system seems to be glitching. No one can vote it just says already counted your vote. Can u guys let us know what is going on. And have tried to post to this several times and it’s not showing up either.
Thanks for letting us know Don
Voting isn’t allowing either
Isn’t allowing me**
To vote saying I have already voted
I believe this is rig. Shame on you all
Why is this rigged? What would be the purpose of us rigging it? This is an event we did to celebrate the seniors.
Look at the stats, league, career, rank, schedule and then vote. I know everybody has a favorite but that doesn’t make them the better player.
Hey Off the Block… what’s going on??? I checked the numbers and even though I just voted, the numbers for Rado didn’t change. In fact, it actually is going backwards.
Is this a con???
No con, more than 15,000 votes so far and tons votes are pouring in.
We bowed out for our guy around 10:30 this morning and told our voters to not worry about it anymore. We were so overwhelmed with our friends and family texting and messaging us that they had been trying for hours and it just kept saying they had already voted. Not one of our devices was recording anymore by about 8:00 this morning. We had so many friends and family all over the nation including entire high schools, sororities, and churches voting. It began as a fun diversion of hundreds of us setting alarms and while there were “glitches” along the way, we kind of kept plowing until yesterday when it turned into an exercise in frustration. At one point yesterday, my husband seemed to be able to vote endlessly, but every time he did, one of the other guy’s counts went up while ours went down. He just stopped voting on that device. At one point, there were 26 of us voting within the same minute and our guy went down.. If there were only 15,000 votes total, that shouldn’t have happened. This is our second year of participating and as my uncle said, “fool me once shame on me, fool me twice…”. Perhaps a better 3rd party app can be found with more transparency (a vote count, as I mentioned before, would be helpful). The contest is such a great idea and we LOVE this site, but I don’t see us participating in any future contests (even though we have another kiddo coming through) and we certainly won’t ask friends and family again—it was so embarrassing by the end because the app couldn’t seem to handle the volume or something. It discouraged voting by the end and lost participants. Congratulations to all the seniors and good luck to all of you! The fact that you all made it through college careers means you have self-discipline, talent, and drive! Thank you, Vinnie, for honoring these young men and for the time you put into your research and growing the game. Much appreciated!!