Six days from today the NCAA Women's Volleyball Tournament Playoff Committee will announce the seeded teams participating in the 2009 NCAA Women's Volleyball Playoffs Tournament.
Every year there's debate over which teams should have received better matchups, which shouldn't have to travel and those teams that just plain out got disrespected despite their year-end conference standings or team records. So, this year I decided to ask someone who's been sitting on the sidelines with a ringside seat of many of these college volleyball in-season and playoff season volleyball games to share his take on the seeding process.
I asked TV color analyst and veteran volleyball broadcaster Phil Bush permission to reprint and share with Volleyball Voices readers his article, originally published in the May edition of Volleyball Magazine entitled "Horribly Flawed".
Phil is No shrinking violet when it comes to expressing his opinion on modifications he thinks the NCAA should make to the women's playoff tournament.
Phil IS opinionated. You've been warned.
But don't let that stop you from following him on twitter at: http://twitter.com/psbush
After reading Phil's views if you have some of your own, please share them. Leave a comment below.
Horribly Flawed
The NCAA Division I women’s tournament
needs some modifications made to it.
By Phil Bush
The NCAA Division I Women’s Volleyball Tournament should be a big showcase for the sport in the U.S., but the tournament is marred with problems.
I see two themes here.
First, teams 1-16 are seeded. Seeds 17-64 are an afterthought. Secondly, regionalization is an option.
See if I’m off-base here.
Kentucky and Michigan played in the first round this past season. These teams had regional seeds of five and 12. I’ll let you figure out which was which. Both deserved a better first round match-up. But Michigan is near Kentucky travel-wise, right? And the winner got St. Louis in the second round?
Alabama-Birmingham and Missouri State played in the first round and were seeded eight and nine. In the second round, the winner played Nebraska—the top seed in this part of the bracket.
How does Missouri State, which only got in by winning its conference tournament, end up with an eight or nine seed? Or does the committee say, “You are both going to lose to Nebraska, so who cares?”
UAB travels to Nebraska. Is Birmingham close to Nebraska? Missouri State’s power ranking was low. If you rewarded them, other teams like Michigan and Kentucky have to think, “Why are we fighting to get out of the first round against a higher RPI team and two lower RPI teams played each other?”
LSU played UCLA in the first round. LSU once again must have annoyed someone.
They got sent to the west again. Why not send them to Texas?
Louisville and Purdue also squared off in the first round. Louisville was a 14 seed. Putting Louisville in a worse spot than teams like American (11 seed), Missouri State (9 seed) and Florida International (12 seed) is wrong. How is it fair to Louisville?Colorado State and Florida matched up in the second round. Maybe the seeding made sense, but why send CSU cross country? Why not to Cal, Nebraska, UCLA or even Texas?
The fact these teams played each other earlier in the year also seems unfair to CSU, which won the first time and had to play the Gators in Gainesville in a rematch.
And not officially seeding past 16 is just ridiculous. Anyone reviewing RPIs can figure out the seedings to a pretty good degree. When will the NCAA committee learn that seeding all 64 teams would be a good thing?
It would promote controversy, conversation and debate—which this event needs.
The tourney hardly warrants a line in the national media.
A big reason March Madness is so great is because of the conversation it provokes. Volleyball has none of that outside of hardcore fans. Controversy creates attention and attention creates media coverage.
Media coverage increases interest and that is what is lacking today.
To not seed all teams is a disservice primarily to the student-athletes who have worked hard to be in a position to compete for a national championship.
This should not be a tournament where the top 16 teams are what matters and the others do not.
It should be about getting to that next match, getting to the round of 16 and maybe being that year’s Cinderella.
