2/20/25
Here are some more observations of the D3 men’s college volleyball landscape:
Warren Wilson appears to have shut down their program for the season and show the rest of the games on their schedule as cancelled. The team was 0-10 and had yet to win a set for 2025.
Southern Virginia remains the only team at D3 yet to lose a set this season. 30-0 in set play for the Knights.
Just 4 teams remain without a single loss in 2025. NYU sports the best record in the nation at 14-0. Elmira has 12 wins without a loss and Vassar and SVU remain unbeaten with 11 and 10 wins respectively.
At this point in the season, with 6 weeks left before conference playoffs start, it appears that at least 7 conferences with automatic bids for the NCAA tourney will produce participants that are not in the top 15 rankings. The AMCC, CUNY, NEVC, ODAC, PAC, Skyline, and UEast are on this list. Of the 19 playoff spots, it is likely that high ranked teams will emerge from the CCIW, CVC, NAC, MAC, NACC, and UVC. Using the new rating system, there will be 5 non-automatic spots for the new system to rank and award slots. Cal Lutheran and Springfield appear to be locks at this point as Independents. But there is a lot of volleyball still left to play. We see multiple team selections in the CCIW, CVC, and UVC. Using our ranking system, this is an early prediction of the NCAA playoff grid:
Tournament upsets could throw the grid into a much different scenario especially if teams like Hobart, Misericordia, Rutgers, Lasell, North Central, SJF or others can pull of wins. In our scenario above, defending champs Cal Lutheran, North Central, UC Santa Cruz, and Hobart do not get a bid.
The weekend is filled with high profile matchups that you want to catch on livestreams. Here are some of the notable games:
Thursday: Lasell at Wentworth, Dominican at Augustana, Carthage at MSOE
Friday: Nichols visits Juniata, SJF at Elmira, MIT at Vassar, Wittenberg at Juniata
Saturday: Rutgers vs. Randolph Macon, Nichols vs SJF, MIT vs NYU, SJF vs Juniata, Loras vs North Central, Vassar vs. Springfield, Wabash vs. Aurora
Here is the latest ranking as of 2/20 AM:
Here are the latest conference standings as of 2/20 AM: