RE: Volleyball gets NCCA tournament bid
Via RPI, ETSU is "ranked" 34th. Purdue tied for 16th with Creighton. (So we can figure that if the seedings went below 16, they would likely have been one of the next ones.) Samford way down at 121. I haven't been keeping up with their RPI, but I think it's safe to say that the loss to Samford in the SoCon finals hurt their RPI quite a bit.
Washington St., who the Bucs beat, was seeded 16th overall, with an RPI ranking of 12th. Tennessee, who we edged 3-2, has an RPI of 29, with no seeding in the tournament. Cincinnati, who we lost to, 3-2, has an RPI of 23 and also did not get a seed. South Carolina, who took us down 3-0, didn't get seeded with an RPI of 32.
Duke, who we beat 3-1, got in unseeded with an RPI of 48 with only a 14-11 record from the weak-this-year ACC. Western KY, who trounced us 3-0, did not get in with a 62 RPI, so that loss way back in Sept. hurt, too. The High Point loss I'm sure hurt as well, but maybe not as much as it appeared at the time, as they finished with an RPI of 56 and managed to get in. (The next highest Big South team RPI-wise was Radford at 107.)
All-in-all, I think the Purdue match-up is probably a fair one, but it sure ain't gonna be a picnic.
That said (from an NCAA site):
"The two teams most likely to thwart those opportunities are the reigning national champion, No. 7 Nebraska, and No. 10 Kentucky. Those two teams could meet in the Big Ten regional semifinals after last season’s regional final matchup. For an unseeded sleeper, it has to be Purdue which has been a top-15 team pretty much all season."
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