All Pac-12: Rowland, Vansant, Ross

Bianca Rowland & Krista Vansant
[Volleyblog Seattle photo by Leslie Hamann]

Washington's Krista Vansant was named Pac-12 Freshman of the Year, and senior Bianca Rowland was named to the Pac-12 All-Conference first team today.

Vansant was also named All-Conference Honorable Mention. Outside hitter Summer Ross was honorable mention for the Freshman team.

USC swept all the other major awards: Mick Haley, coach of the year, Alex Jupiter, player of the year, Kendall Bateman, setter of the year, and Natalie Hagglund, libero of the year.

From where we sit, two players on the All-Conference honorable mention team belonged instead on the First Team: Correy Johnson and Robin Rostratter, both of Cal.

Summer Ross should have been on the All-Freshman team. Hitters are too often evaluated only for their hitting, but Ross is an exceptional server, passer and blocker, and she played nearly every single second of the season.

Lauren Barfield--one of the nation's top blockers and a vastly improved hitter--deserved Honorable Mention consideration.

The Pac-12 press release and full list of honorees: Pac-12 Postseason Honors Announced

ESPN: NCAA committee put together "a gag bracket"

Some tough--and entertaining--talk from ESPN's college volleyball columnist, Mechelle Voepel:

Take a look at this year's NCAA tournament bracket for women's volleyball, and you might just wonder if somebody hacked into the organization and inserted a gag bracket as a prank.

USC's Mick Haley

Voepel interviews USC Coach Mick Haley, who repeats the assertion he made yesterday to Volleyblog Seattle: "the committee and the RPI are not on the same page with the coaches."

He's right. There's no way the committee could put the Trojans at the No. 7 seed unless: (1) the members don't really watch much volleyball, or (2) they're not qualified to evaluate what they do watch, or (3) they are fulfilling an agenda that has nothing to do with USC's actual talent or results. Or, again, a mix of all of that.

Voepel defends the entire Pac-12 (and West Coast volleyball in general):

Here's an idea for the committee members if they have such a problem with the West Coast's traditional dominance in volleyball. Why not make all West Coast (Hawaii, too) teams wear ankle weights during the NCAA tournament? Gee, maybe that will allow an ACC team or Big East team to make the Final Four for the first time ever. Or an SEC team to win the NCAA championship for the first time ever.
Since the NCAA tournament started in 1982, there have been only three years where the Final Four didn't have a team from a school now in the Pac-12. (Although technically, the Pac-10 didn't begin sponsoring women's sports until 1986-87.) And each of those three years, the Final Four still had a representative from the West Coast.
No doubt, the West Coast will be represented in San Antonio this year. Some team(s) just might have to go through an unjustly difficult path to get there.

See the full column at: 5 burning questions for NCAA tourney

Seeding and Polls and RPI, oh my!

Whether you think the Selection Committee got it right or not, the 2011 Tournament seedings are final, and we’re all stuck with them.

Last season, the committee did a generally poor job of ranking—and, therefore, seeding—the top 8 (missing four of the Elite Eight) and the top 4 (missing three of the Final Four.)

This season, the committee figures only one Pac-12 team—USC—will reach the Elite Eight (compared to four last season), and that no Pac-12 teams will reach the Final Four (compared to two last year.) In ten short days, we’ll know whether they figured right.

2010 Final Four: Cal vs. Penn St.
[Volleyblog Seattle photo by Leslie Hamann]

You may have noticed that this year’s committee completely ignored Nebraska’s Saturday night loss to Northwestern. It also overlooked Stanford’s loss to California and USC’s win over UCLA. Some wonder whether committee members filled out their bracket Saturday morning and went to Disneyland for the rest of the weekend …

The coaches did not have a poll this week, so we don’t know how the Nebraska, Stanford and UCLA losses might have changed their rankings. The final media poll was released this morning.

So … here’s the fun part.

Let’s compare the ability of the committee, the coaches, the media—and Volleyblog Seattle—to forecast this season’s Elite Eight and Final Four. The committee's choices are easy to calculate, since its rankings and seedings were one and the same. For everyone else, we calculated brackets (below) based on expected outcomes using the committee’s seedings. We also remind you how the Final Four might have looked if the non-committee prognosticators had been able to seed the bracket themselves.

[Note: When three or more of a prognosticator’s top 16 ranked teams were seeded by the committee into the same region, one or more of those teams has to drop out before the Elite Eight. For example, both coaches and media rank Hawai’i in the top four, but the Rainbow Wahine are stuck behind each poll’s top two teams, USC and Nebraska. With similar disagreements over seeding for Cal and Penn State, Washington slips into the Elite Eight in both scenarios.]

Okay … before the first match is played, share YOUR Elite Eight picks, using the committee’s bracket? Don't forget to tell us who (in order) would be in the Final Four if YOU had seeded this tournament!

Tourney Seed	RPI	School	2011 Record	Coaches’ Poll	Media Poll	Volleyblog Seattle
1	2	Texas	21-4	5	3	5
2	4	Nebraska	24-4	2	2	6
3	1	Illinois	27-4	7	8	7
4	3	Iowa State	22-5	14	14	15
5	6	Purdue	27-4	8	7	2
6	5	Northern Iowa	32-1	12	11	13
7	8	USC	25-4	1	1	1
8	11	Penn State	23-7	9	9	3
9	15	UCLA	24-6	4	5	4
10	7	Hawaii	29-1	3	4	12
11	18	Stanford	21-7	6	6	9
12	10	Florida St	24-6	21	--	--
13	12	Minnesota	18-11	19	19	--
14	9	Tennessee	27-3	15	15	16
15	16	Pepperdine	21-6	18	16	14
16	17	Texas A&M	22-7	--	--	20
--	29	California	26-6	10	10	10
--	35	Washington	23-7	11	12	8
--	30	Oregon	21-9	13	13	11
--	13	Kentucky	26-5	16	17	17
--	20	Florida	24-5	17	18	18
--	25	San Diego	27-4	20	20	19
--	23	Michigan	20-12	22	--	--
--	41	Long Beach St	23-6	23	--	--
--	21	W. Kentucky	31-3	24	--	--
--	22	Miami (FL)	25-4	25	--	--
--	14	No. Illinois	--	--	--	--
--	19	Cincinnati	26-9	--	--	--
--	24	Tulsa	26-7	--	--	--
--	26	Kansas St	20-10	--	--	--
--	27	Oklahoma	21-11	--	--	--
--	28	Colorado St	23-5	--	--	--
--	31	N. Carolina	23-8	--	--	--
--	32	W. Michigan	24-8	--	--	--
--	33	Missouri	21-12	--	--	--
--	34	Ball St	25-7	--	--	--