TigersTigers

Extremely tense and kind of strange match. Neither team played their best. The word that comes to mind when thinking of this Towson performance is “gritty.” If ever there was a time to beat Penn State in volleyball, this is it. This is not a vintage PSU team (although still significantly better than us, let’s not make two ways about it)

Dismissive? Absolutely, but in the context of the bracket as a whole, it is 100% true. There are higher-seeded teams than PSU with waaaaay more difficult potential second round matchups. The draw worked out very favorably for us in two ways: 1) getting a match we can actually win, and 2) if we do win, we get PSU, who is one of the weaker seeded teams. It was favorable for PSU in the sense that they would have to play either us or American in the second round. Conversely, Wisconsin will probably have to play UCLA, Pitt would have to play Cincy, and Minnesota would have to play Creighton. All of the teams mentioned are a clear cut above Towson. The ones who this tweet really disrespects is American.

The team was drawn against American, the Patriot League Champs who are a very good team. Should they win in the first round, they would play the winner of Princeton and #11 Penn State.

Hell of a team. Finished off conference with a 3-0 no-doubter against the next-best team. Proud of em.

Semifinal Results from Saturday: #1 Towson def. #5 Elon 3-1 (19-25, 25-18, 25-17, 25-19) #2 James Madison def. #6 Delaware (25-16, 25-19, 24-26, 25-15) Final on Sunday: #1 Towson vs. #2 James Madison, 2 PM.

Quarterfinal Results from Friday: #5 Elon def. #4 Northeastern 3-2 (26-24, 23-25, 25-18, 12-25, 16-14) #6 Delaware def. #3 Hofstra 3-2 (23-25, 20-25, 28-26, 25-22, 15-13) Two very close and exciting matches. Delaware erasing a 2-0 deficit to eliminate the hosts and defending champions was a major shock. Semifinal Matches on Saturday: #1 Towson vs. #5 Elon, 2 PM. #2 James Madison vs. #6 Delaware, 5 PM.

It doesn’t come as much of a surprise, but Towson nearly swept the end-of-season awards. Took home Player (and setter) of the Year, Rookie of the Year, and Coach of the Year.

Ankle injury, she was in a boot on the bench for both matches. From what I’ve gathered her return for the CAA tournament is questionable. The good news regarding this is that her replacement, Nikiya Mitchell, saw her first action in CAA play all season and was promptly awarded Defensive Player of the Week. Honestly, this team is good enough to win the tournament with or without Wiers (although with would be preferable, she’s a great player).

The good news: Towson finished CAA play 16-0 (the first time any team has ever done that) and will head into the tournament on a 20-match win streak. The bad news: They played both matches this weekend without starting Middle Lydia Wiers, who is basically a lock for CAA Rookie of the Year.

#1 seed clinched and at least a share of the regular-season title with a 3-1 away win over Charleston. Home-court for next year's tournament secured. Outright regular season championship clinched with one more win from their final 3 games.

Great win for vb last night against JMU in front of a record home crowd. Really that win was extremely important because it gives us the advantage over JMU should any tie-break occur. Hofstra is the only other team that could possibly win the regular season title, and we already have the tie-break over them as well. Basically, all we have to do now is win 2 of our final 5 matches to clinch the #1 seed for the tournament. The top 2 teams get first-round byes, but being #1 is huge because 1) It means next year's tournament will be at Towson, and 2) JMU and Hofstra will likely have to play each other in the semi-finals, meaning we would avoid both of them until the final.

The way it works is that the regular season champions of the previous season get to host the CAA tournament for the current season. Thus, we already know that the tournament will be at Hofstra this year, regardless of where they finish. It'll even be at Hofstra if they don't qualify for the tournament (That actually happened a few years ago). It's kind of an odd system, I assume it is in place both to give incentive to the regular season title and to give the potential hosts some advanced planning time. We currently have a 2-game lead in the standings with 6 matches left. If we can hold on to that lead, we will have home-court next year in the tournament.

Like where we're at. If you were to ask me at the start of the year if we'd ever even be ranked, I'd have said absolutely not. Only thing we can do now is get to 6-1.

That conference statement also works in our favor for when we play out-of-conference games. If we beat a team like The Citadel, people watching go, "Makes sense, they're in a stronger conference." We get a win, the profile of the conference is raised slightly more, which then increases the clout of our conference wins, thus raising our profile, thus raising our conference's profile, and the cycle goes on. It's gotten to a point where it's basically guaranteed that a CAA team will make it in if they go 8-3. That's why I don't really mind not being ranked early on.

Meh, not the end of the world. If we beat The Citadel we'll be ranked after week 5.

It seems we’ve still got W&M’s number. Over the past three years we’re 5-1 against them. We have to beat Elon.

This one is really important. The top 7 in this league are separated by very little. We lose games like this one, we could find ourselves playing on the first day of the CAA tournament.

That honestly sounds like same old Drexel of the last 3 or 4 years to me. They have had some really talented players but just constantly find new ways to come up short in conference play. Last year was the perfect example. Off the top of my head, I can think of their game against us where they absolutely HAD it, but Lee missed the gimme in 2OT that would’ve completed their biggest win of the year. Then in the very next game, they blew a 10-point lead against Hofstra in the final 1:15. They simply haven’t been able to put it together recently.

Is this how it's gonna be this year... we beat all the teams above us in the standings and lose to all the teams below us?

And now for a quick reminder that we'll be fine: We'll be fine.

I have no problem with Towson getting the recognition, but 4th is too high. If we were to beat Oakland and Pitt, that would change my mind. I don't think we will though. I'm not saying that's even a problem. We don't have to be 4th in the poll to know that we're having a great season so far, and even if we go 0-4 on this road trip, we're fine.

If we go 2-2 on this road trip then we have a serious shot at the NCAA tournament

Terrific start to the season. Over the course of the season, we'll eventually lose enough games that we won't be getting any votes in the AP Poll, but I could see us staying in the mid-major polls all year if we keep playing this well. Oakland will be tough.

After back-to-back 3-2 wins over UNCW and JMU, the team can still capture the second seed (which means a first round bye) for the playoffs. For this to happen, we must beat the Blue Hens on Nov. 12 and hope Northeastern loses one of their final two games to Hofstra or JMU. This is very possible, considering NU is currently in mediocre form and both their matches are against top-half teams. We should expect to beat Delaware, considering they're one of the weakest teams in the CAA (although UNCW is also struggling and still took a 2-0 lead against us on Saturday).