Predicting 2018 Conference Races

Author's note: I haven't posted on here in ages, but I'm planning to make it at least a semi-regular thing moving forward. Bracketology and bubble watch are both tentatively planned. I'm considering doing a weekly ranking for teams in smaller conference -- an even deeper look than VolleyballMag's excellent Mid-Major Poll offers, by eliminating more of the top conferences.

Comments? Questions? Suggestions for what I should do next? Want to yell at me because I'm blatantly disrespecting your team? You can easily find me on Twitter: I am the human operating the VBScores fan account which I'm always happy to answer questions from, or you can also find me through my personal account, DawgoneCrazy, if you don't mind seeing lots of tweets about Seattle sports, especially the Huskies and the Mariners.

Conference play is upon us -- in fact, the Metro Atlantic started conference play last weekend. 30 of the 31 remaining conferences will start this week, with the MEAC waiting until next week. There's a month of results to base predictions on, so here's a fun little projection on what the season will bring.

Listed below are my top 3 projected finishers in each conference. These are based off of a few different things: preseason coaches polls, computer ratings generated by MasseyRatings, and the good 'ol eye test. The conferences are sorted by confidence in the top pick, from most to least:

West Coast: Brigham Young, Loyola Marymount, San Diego
Summit: Denver, North Dakota, South Dakota
Big West: Cal Poly, UC Irvine, Hawaii
Atlantic 10: Dayton, VCU, Davidson

Atlantic Coast: Pittsburgh, Louisville, Notre Dame
Big 12: Texas, Baylor, Kansas State
Southern: ETSU, Wofford, Furman
Ohio Valley: Austin Peay, Murray State, Morehead State

Pacific 12: Stanford, USC, Oregon
Conference USA: Western Kentucky, Rice, UTSA
Mountain West: Colorado State, Wyoming, Boise State
American Athletic: Wichita State, UCF, Cincinnati

Metro Atlantic: Fairfield, Marist, Rider
Mid-Eastern Athletic: Howard, Bethune-Cookman, Maryland-Eastern Shore
Atlantic Sun: Kennesaw State, Lipscomb, FGCU
Missouri Valley: Northern Iowa, Illinois State, Missouri State

Ivy: Princeton, Yale, Harvard
Southwestern Athletic: Alabama State, Alabama A&M, Texas Southern
Sun Belt: Texas State, Arkansas State, Coastal Carolina
Big South: High Point, Radford, Winthrop

Southland: Stephen F. Austin, Central Arkansas, Houston Baptist
America East: Albany, Stony Brook, New Hampshire
Big East: Creighton, Marquette, Villanova
Mid-American: Miami-Ohio, Ball State, Western Michigan

Southeastern: Florida, Kentucky, Georgia
Colonial: College of Charleston, James Madison, Hofstra
Western Athletic: New Mexico State, UTRGV, Utah Valley
Big Ten: Nebraska, Illinois, Wisconsin

Northeast: Sacred Heart, Bryant, Long Island
Patriot: Navy, American, Lehigh
Big Sky: Northern Arizona, Idaho, Northern Colorado
Horizon: Cleveland State, Northern Kentucky, Oakland

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

2018 #NCAAVB tourney predictions

A Q&A collaboration between three volleyball addicts: Myself, @DawgoneCrazy (primary interest: Washington and the Pac-12) @cheesetrader1 (Wisconsin and the Big Ten) @vballfreak808 (Hawaii and the West Coast in general: Pac-12, WCC, Big West) Toughest pod? Cheese: Orlando is clearly brutal. Pullman isn't easy either, particularly if you're a hitter: Washington State, Tennessee, and Colorado State all have really good blocking. 808: The Stanford subregional is tougher than people may expect, with LMU and Duke each taking down a top 10 opponent this season. Stanford is the top seed but scrappy teams have caused trouble for the Cardinal before. Dawg: Besides Orlando, Lexington really stands out to me. Kentucky has lost just once since opening weekend, and had a really long stretch without dropping a set in SEC play. Purdue hasn't lost a single match to a team outside of the top 20 all year, but that will be put to the test right off the bat with ETSU, who holds
Read more
With just a week and a half until Selection Sunday, a overview of where teams are relative to the cut line for NCAA at-large bids. Records and ( unofficial ) RPI current through Wednesday, 11/20. Questions/Comments? Tweet me @NCAAVBscores. Lock: I feel 100% confident this team will make the NCAA tournament even if they were to lose every remaining match. Just avoid disaster: Pretty self-explanatory, I think. It varies what exactly that means, though. For teams in power conference, this means just don't lose out, but for a few teams that are large favorites multiple times (such as Cal Poly and UCSB), it means just don't suffer a major upset. Right side of the bubble: If the season ended now, I would have this team in, but they're far from safe. Wrong side of the bubble: If the season ended now, I would have this team out, but getting there is quite reasonable. Need wins: An uphill climb to a bid. Primarily used for teams with a tough schedule remaining -w
Read more

Fall 2020 #NCAAVB rankings: Week 2

Notes: Only teams that have played at least one match already will be listed here. That means a couple of things: top teams in conferences not playing fall seasons at all won't be listed; it doesn't mean I think they're worse than teams listed here (think Pac-12 & Big Ten at least for now, plus teams like Hawaii, Creighton, Marquette and Colorado State). On a similar note, teams playing a fall schedule that starts late won't be ranked until they play their first game (mostly referring to SEC; also applies to the Big 12, ACC and about half of Sun Belt to a lesser extent). A side effect of doing the rankings this way is that teams playing early will later drop significantly (if not out of rankings entirely) through no fault of their own, simply because more poerful teams open their seasons. While less than ideal, I feel this is better than the alternative (attempting to rank every team that will play in fall at some point) for a few reasons: 1) It focuses the attentio
Read more