The video linked below shows the volleyball events from January 25th, 2024 – Today is the one-year anniversary of it, and its story written from my vantage point is seen below – “The Big Apple to the City of Angels.” (The Video is set to the song “Secrets” by OneRepublic & Written by Ryan Tedder.)
The video can be watched HERE.
The Big Apple to the City of Angels. (No, not a biblical tale related to the Garden of Eden.)
I chose the adjective “remarkable” because this story is uncommonly rare, and curious – Not significant or outstanding and certainly with no mass appeal, either. Had you been the lone volleyball junkie tuning in to watch “Manhattan Mania” at 7:00 pm last January 25th, pitting two eventual conference champs out of the UVC (NYU) and CUNY (Baruch) against each other and whose campuses are just a mile apart on the Island of the Big Apple, and then just 5 minutes after it had finished, surfed your way to a stream-cast of the defending D1 National Champion UCLA Bruins hosting Santa Barbara, your likely take-away would have been, ” I caught a couple really good volleyball matches.” Maybe you’d even have considered them great. After all, it was two Davids each digging and swinging their way to triumph over neighboring Goliaths from different conferences than their own. Probably not even cognizant of previous sets’ digits because the eye candy of the competitive play would have been so captivating every step of the way. Had I been a guy who just got his hands on a time-machine while visiting Scotty on the USS Enterprise, then I would have “beamed” to your home, dorm room, or the internet coffee shop from where you were watching these matches so that for the first time in my life I could genuinely recommend, “It’s a really good idea to go down to the convenience store and buy both a Mega-Millions & Powerball ticket. As in do it RIGHT NOW!”
Even though the probability for a Men’s Volleyball match ending with “Five Deuces Across the Board” is higher for any single D1 match, it shows up slightly more often in the D3 realm, a product of twice as many D3 matches being played per season. Manhattan Mania was even more an anomaly than the other 5-Deuce matches the last decade because 4 of its 5 sets went extra points. One might even call it an outlier amongst the outliers because twice as many sets from this match crashed through the 25/15 ceiling compared to any of the other five 5-Deuce matches from all 3 levels of NCAA Men’s Volleyball on record since 2016. Taken together with Baruch being a 20-1 Dog winner guarantees Manhattan Mania, alone, as the most unlikely match result in the last 10 years. Probably not to be seen again for decades, short of the number of men’s teams doubling in 10 years, which might actually allow for the gold standard – “All Extra Point 5 Set-Deuces” to possibly happen before the next Century comes along. And you know what happened about 5 minutes after this? The second most unlikely match outcome of the decade followed it up.
Imagine my surprise after initiating a conversation with a D3 coach who shared regarding the 5-Deuce phenomenon, “It’s really not that uncommon – In fact it happened earlier this week when UCLA lost.” This dialogue less than 48 hours after writing Manhattan Mania. In somewhat disbelief I went directly to VBelo, my main source for all things D1 Men’s Volleyball, to check the veracity of this claim. Seen below is what I found there, having first realized the match to which he was referring actually took place on the same date, January 25th, at the same time, 7:00 pm. I almost lost my mind! Was my analysis flawed? If not, then how is this even possible?
I emailed the VBelo Editor soon after, one of the good guys in the business I have been in contact with for a few years. I asked him, “TJ do you have any other Five-Deuces in your database of D1 games?” He got back to me soon after with, “It’s the only time it happened going back 5 years when I started doing this.” Flash forward about a year later to when I recently determined it happened just one other time in D1 over the last decade – On 4/12/18, Santa Barbara defeated Cal-Irvine with 5-Deuces across the board, not one of those going extra points. Wait…? … Yes, that Santa Barbara, the same who won the only other time a 5- Deuces happened in D1 over the last decade, 6 years later, on January 25th, 2024. I am reasonably certain the 2018 version of the Gauchos was not a 30-1 Dog when they won the 2018 Five-Deuce contest like the 2024 version of them was last year. Oh, by the way, that 2018 match was also on a Thursday!
No doubt, I have an obsession a fascination with both matches being scheduled to start at 7pm on Thursday, January 25, 2024, certainly. It adds to the lore. Equally surprising is that there were only 6 matches scheduled on this day in D1 & likewise, just 6 in D3 on that day, too. It shouldn’t have happened even had there been 100 of them, but on a day when there were only 6 matches scheduled from each Division – Two events, each happening no more than once every few years, took place in real time just minutes after each other … I think the official statistical term for this is “BONKERS!”
There might be very little else to explore except the exact moment Manhattan Mania ended. An image from a video of the final point in the Big Apple as seen above posted at exactly 10:10 pm. (Bottom left corner) One might assume the last point was played pretty close to 10:00 PM EST, the exact moment the match at Pauley Pavillion was set to begin in L.A. with their 3-hour time difference. Rather than assume it did, I could really use help from you, if you were that lone volleyball junkie, wherever you are now. “Could you be so kind as to repay the favor for me encouraging your purchase of those two winning lotto tickets last year by sharing exactly how much time passed between the final point in the Big Apple and when you saw the first serve in the City of Angels?” I would determine it myself, but Scotty tells me the transporter isn’t functional because it, “Needs more power,” and my time-machine is in the shop. Thanks so much and enjoy your new Caribbean Island.
For any who find the last point video on Baruch’s site with intention to zoom in on frames looking for clocks on the wall or even watches on wrists of people like the Baruch coach, let me save you the trouble. Been there and tried that already! LOL
This was a story about uncanny outcomes and timing in Sport, told as seen through a lens of probability. It wasn’t one where vivid images & popularity rule the day. Such as Micheal Phelps’ exploits in earning 8 Gold Medals in Beijing or NFL Playoff phenomena the likes of “13 Seconds” three years ago at Arrowhead Stadium, or even what may materialize in 48 hours at the same scene of that “Crime against all Western New Yorkers.” It’s about subtleties of things that don’t happen every day. Those we almost always miss because they’re camouflaged amidst the benign narratives flooding our minds, never allowed the opportunity to etch their richness into memory. A mindless fog draping our senses to obscure, in some cases, even the truth. Events that don’t jump off a page or pop out of the screen to grab us by the throat hand rarely lead to essential moments of clarity. Though sometimes they do lie in wait, just outside of reach. And in those times, devoting a little time and energy, and with a little luck, there might just be a jewel of a story to be found. I hope I have done service to this one. I waited a year to tell it!
If you want to see the box scores of these matches without having to catch them as they flash on the earlier video, you can use the slider to go back & forth between them below. As you are doing so don’t forget that the T100 had Baruch at about 4.5% to win their match in real time & VBelo had Santa Barbara at 3% to defeat UCLA on the day of its match. NYU was ranked 8th at the time in the AVCA D3 Poll & UCLA was ranked #2 in the AVCA D1 Poll two days previous to these matches being played. Oh yeah, NYU ended up 3rd in the Nation losing the semi-final at the NCAAs and UCLA went on to win their second consecutive National Championship a couple weeks later. The retrospective on these two upsets certainly remained Notable & Unreal, respectively, as they were thrust to the 10th and 4th biggest upsets of the season in their respective Divisions.
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