March 25, 2024
New rankings are out as of yesterday. The top 10 is still pretty stagnant with no major movement. Southern Virginia and Loras maintain the IH 1 and 2 spots as they have the past several weeks. Wentworth and Stevens remain at 3 and 4. The biggest movement of the week was Augustana’s jump to #13 in what seems to be an amazingly competitive CCIW conference race.
We will start to look at projected conference seedings for upcoming tournaments along with our picks for which teams will advance to the NCAA Championship tourney very soon.
The data collector remains open in our “IH Player Survey” project. We appreciate all of the players who took the time to complete this survey. We ended up sending over 600 invites to players through Instagram out of the roughly 2,000 member player pool. That was a bit harder than expected as trying to find certain players was tedious at best and often unsuccessful. Some players were kind enough to share the link in their group chats. We had to make sure it was actual players completing the survey’s, thus our approach was a bit unconventional. Now that we have reached critical mass, we can share the survey link for any other players that would like to participate:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/WCFKV8S
The survey process has been educational, and we already have received several suggestions to improve our process. It’s so hard to build trust with being around for just a few years. But we remain focused on bringing integrity to the data and anonymity to the respondents. We are an advocate for the game of volleyball and want to represent the players voice in many upcoming articles.
There is one thing that is very clear after collecting the preliminary data from the survey. Every coach has a different game plan for their teams success. There does not appear to be a golden rule or playbook that each coach follows for success. Our hope is to bring some of the more innovative practices into visibility. And answer the questions as to what team strategies can bring a positive impact to a D3 volleyball team. Every team has different personalities, different coaching philosophies, different budgets, and different talent levels. We want to create some debate on what works and what does not. And hopefully open some eyes with some tools that can improve volleyball programs, improve player attitudes and experiences, and improve communication across the landscape.
A very light schedule tonight as Spring Breaks wind down. Most schools will be ending their regular season by the end of this calendar week. Some major conference match-ups this week will set the tone for playoff seedings. Here is a preview:
Tuesday: Hunter vs. Baruch, Messiah vs. Misericordia, Wentworth vs. Lasell,
Wednesday: Randolph Macon vs. Eastern Mennonite, Elmira vs Hobart, SUNY New Paltz vs. NYU, Kean vs. Rutgers,
Thursday: John Jay vs. Hunter,
Friday: MIT vs. St. John Fisher, Marymount vs. Juniata,
Saturday: Loras vs. Carthage, Illinois Tech vs. CUW,
Player Evaluator updates coming this week as well so stay tuned…
Accolades:
CJ Addeo of the Drew Rangers put up his 100th block of his career. The 6′ 3″ junior now has 108 and counting. Great job #21.
Christian Taylor, Head Coach of Randolph-Macon, recorded his 50th career win this past week. Coach is no stranger to the record books finishing his athletic career with 4,154 assists (Eastern Mennonite and Stevenson), the fifth highest in NCAA D3 history.
St. Joe’s Long Island has a new all-time assist leader. CJ Johnson recorded his 2,429th assist, taking over the school record. CJ has been the picture of consistency since his freshman year and has won just about every award in the Skyline Conference. Not done yet #13!
Ted Gedville of North Park passed the 2,000-assist mark last week. The 6’5″ senior setter is having his best season of his college career in 2024.
North Park’s Kaleb Patrick is now a member of the 500-career assist club. The acrobatic #9 is in his fourth season of lifting spectacular digs for the Vikings.
Carter Milroy has become Geneva’s all-time leading blocker. He currently has 320 total blocks over 4 years. Even more impressive is his other career totals. Carter is approaching 750 career kills, has over 440 digs, and still has a chance to reach 1,000 career points. Awesome job CM!
Marian’s Derek Wills surpassed 1,000 career kills. The senior from Dubuque is having another all-around outstanding season.