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Off the Block each week throughout the rest of the regular season and during the postseason will unveil its latest detailed projections to the NCAA Tournament.
The men’s volleyball Division I-II NCAA Tournament is comprised of seven teams. Automatic bids are awarded to the winners of the Big West, ConfCarolinas, EIVA, MIVA and MPSF conference tournaments, and the NCAA men’s volleyball committee selects two teams for at-large bids.
The five-person selection committee meets following all of the conference tournaments to decide the at-large teams and the tournament seeding. The field for the NCAA Tournament is scheduled to be released during Selection Sunday on April 25.
The NCAA Tournament will begin with a play-in match and then two first-round matches. The top-two seeds will receive byes to the semifinals and will play the winners from the first round.
Off the Block is in its 10th season of providing college men’s volleyball bracketology.
PROJECTED NCAA TOURNAMENT FIELD
FIRST-FOUR TEAMS OUT
Loyola (13-3)
UCLA (11-4)
Long Beach State (3-1)
McKendree (10-4)
Quick breakdown: The canceled match between Pepperdine and UCLA on Wednesday made things a lot murkier in the bracketology. The Waves and Bruins split their season series so far but could meet again before Selection Sunday in a match that would determine who gets the edge in the head-to-head criteria category. Pepperdine is 11-1 against teams not named BYU, but those four losses to BYU have made the at-large bid race much tighter. Things will get even tighter if Loyola can split its two-match series this week against Lewis or if UCLA can split its two-match series versus BYU next week.
On Rob Espero’s Viral Volley podcast this week I thought I heard Coach David Kniffin of UCI say that for the first time ever there is now a 5 person tournament selection committee for the men’s tournament – up from 3.
All of the coaches on this weeks podcast agreed that was a significant improvement.
Whoops, typo