Think I just threew up that title or should I refer to it as “Up 3 and T1 to go.” Either way, I just hurt myself. LOL
The magnitude of week #1 upsets makes those from week #2 look pale by comparison as shown on the graphic below. One reason is because Misericordia re-established what most of the community believed about them before the season began as they shot back into the top 20 of the T100. This while Westminster begins to settle a little bit – Still the best of the “first years” so far! Another reason is because week #2 provided a chance for Cal-Lu to re-establish its foothold back among the T100 top 5 having defeated Carthage this afternoon in Santa Cruz by a score of 3-0. Mount Union continues to play its hellacious schedule showing they will be a serious contender in the improved 2025 MCVL. Its last week’s win over Cal-Lu in Cali not only remains “Notable” right now, but it also likely remains in that class until the end of the 2025 season. It isn’t so surprising week #1 upsets are now being measured as even more impressive by the dogs who won, given the favorites who last week lost those matches followed it up with a great week by responding to the adversity playing so well against top competition. There you go, a retrospective of earlier upsets now offered up to measure their magnitude later in the season – A point of emphasis from the post earlier this week- “How to Measure the Magnitude of an Upset.”
The two “biggest” upsets for weekend #2 are located squarely in the “Ordinary” category as seen below but might not even be expressed as upsets as the season unfolds. Consider the narrative for the teams competing in these two matches written below the graphic.
[1] Kean winning 5 of 9 sets against 2 programs among the AVCA top 13 this week suggest it is to be reckoned with by the upper echelon. I expect the T100 will be steadily moving the Cougars into the upper quartile by the end of this month (Top 32), forecasting them to go into New Paltz having returned their record to a more balanced 5-5! Nichols was defeated by Kean 3-1, and as a consequence, it has already lost to the same number of distinct opponents in the first 8 days of this season as they did throughout all of last year. (Kean, Wentworth, & Stevens this, and Wentworth, Springfield, & Vassar last) They have a rematch next Saturday with Vassar, their last season’s first round NCAA Tournament opponent. In their contest last April, they played the 2024 NCAA Finalist version of Vassar to within a single point over the last 3 sets in a 3-1 loss. The 2025 version of Vassar is off to a good start with a whole host of new players on the court while Nichols is predominantly the same as last season, only now even more hungry for a signature victory. I expect this match will offer high leverage down the road as far as the NPI is concerned, something it seems Nichols was aiming for with this year’s schedule. Particularly with the NEVC now having an automatic bid available, and to date no serious contenders hinting the Bison won’t repeat.
[2] The other “biggest” upset from yesterday was numerically indicated by Buffalo St. getting by Wittenberg 3-1 at the St. John Fisher gymnasium. Buffalo St. had Fisher on the ropes the night before, and demonstrated to this writer they have what it takes to not only earn the automatic bid from the AMCC but might even make some noise in the first round, depending on where the NPI seeds it, of course. Look for the Bengals to continue their ascent up the rankings moving forward! Don’t let the two losses in Rochester this week make you fall asleep on Wittenberg, either. The 2024 MCVL standings leader, and #1 seed, who lost their conference final to a hot Trine team last April is just fine, really. I watched each of the last two contests Wittenberg played against Fisher early this year and last. I believe they are a better team than they were last year when they went 9-1 to win the MCVL regular season crown. The thing is that both Baldwin Wallace and Mount Union already have some great wins to their credit, showing how all 3 of their outlooks might make it so whoever doesn’t win the MCVL Championship this year might get some consideration as a possible at-large in April. Now there is something you haven’t heard too often in the past! Another reason to look very close at how the NPI will differentiate “bubble” teams when that time comes. i.e. The 2nd best in the MCVL might join the bubble, just maybe!
Looking above at the Unreal Region, you can see only 9 out of 1500+ contests played in 2024 ended up there. That is roughly one-half of one percent. It seems somewhat likely Westminster defeating Misericordia the first weekend could remain there, even after this season’s 1500+ matches are played. I don’t believe it will be a death sentence for a Misericordia team with its eye on earning an at-large should it not win the MAC this year. I had a conversation yesterday with a player from a different team about the “What ifs” related to his team almost being perched on the graphic above. He asked, “Would it be better or worse to have had that bad a loss this year with the NPI or last year with the committee?” (As it pertains to qualifying for the NCAA Tournament.) I thought about it for a moment and essentially told him, “Humans have been shown to carry vividness bias into their judgment where a computer system won’t.* This is the year where just one of those bad games will hurt your team less because of the NPI, particularly if you keep your win-rate closer to 80% over the rest of the season, rather than the 75% which seems to have been an NPI benchmark for volleyball bubble teams!”
* When a top 10 team gets beat by an opponent seemed significantly inferior at the time it happens, that is certainly a vivid moment for any thoughtfully engaged human being. Last year there was a lot of chatter about Buff State defeating Santa Cruz – Crazy amounts, really, all season long. The concept is not unlike a coach who sees athleticism ooze from a recent recruit and then becomes blind to the parts of his game that might possibly hurt his team’s prospects. i.e. He vividly recalls the 40-inch vertical, and the 75-mph hammer seemingly ignoring a telegraphing swing motion & hitting out far too often. This a prominent reason for good coaches to meticulously collect data with the acceptance for their potentially failing “eye test.” The tradeoff is that any good coach believes (s)he can teach the negative effects out of a player’s game while recognizing not being able to teach, only enhance, God-given gifts such as athleticism. Vividness bias belongs to a class of Availability Heuristics and can’t be perpetrated by any machine algorithm. A machine has no memory of any event other than it being one of about 30 measured outcomes against whoever the opponent is thought to be at the end of a season, not who it was when the outcome happened. This is unlike the T100 which measures the probability of any team to defeat another in that moment they compete and will never revisit it again.
Speaking of the T100. Here it is at the end of the day.
There are some really good teams out there with some really good players who presently have some very poor records because of who they have scheduled thus far. Let’s just thank our lucky stars we don’t have the privilege to see what the NPI presently thinks about all this. As informative as it might be to see how it operates under the duress of these wacky conditions of polarizing schedule making through the first 9 days, with some teams playing 7 matches so far to others having played none, it might be equal parts gut-wrenching in producing reactionary responses way before there ought to be any need for concern. Now you know why the T100 never posts W-L records. (Plus, there is no room up there!) They are most relevant in a closed system such as conference standings for the purpose of seeding conference tournaments. It’s the matches which are competed that tell the best story of who’s who rather than the accumulation of the outcomes from them. Let’s not pretend there aren’t some rank orders up there on the T100 which might be driving a few readers to drink! Give it another week or two and see if those most concerning don’t start to shift in a manner you find satisfactory. It is well on its way to discovering the truth!
Congrats to the Chiefs, Bills, Eagles & Commanders for moving on in the NFL and providing some great athletic entertainment to watch some excellent competition when volleyball matches get scarce. And be thankful that when one of our officials make a bad call it costs just a single point, but when an NFL zebra messes up it can sometimes lead to as much as a 14-point swing in a football game. Yeah, we got it pretty good.
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