TigersTigers

37 minutes ago, Tigerone94 said:

Bulletin board material for the team...

 

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.

The team checked into the final regular season RPI release at #36, breaking the school record they had set 2 weeks ago. This, combined with their great win-loss record, combined with their wins over at least 2 tournament teams (this could grow to 3 or 4 come Selection Sunday), means that they should get a first-round match that is winnable. They probably won't be favored, but they can expect the equivalent of a seed somewhere in the 9-12 range if this were the basketball tournament. 

For those of you who are new to College Volleyball (Which is almost all of you. Welcome! It's a lot of fun, trust me): The NCAA committee formats the tournament by seeding only the top 16 teams in the country. Each of these 16 hosts an opening-weekend quartet of teams. Outside of the top 16, the rest of the field is divvied up by relative strength, and also vaguely by geographical region (This isn't a huge identifier or rule, but the NCAA won't be paying to fly Towson out to Hawaii for the first round. It is 90% likely that they are sent somewhere East of the Mississippi). As a result, each of the 16 sites has one seeded host team and three unseeded visiting teams. From the look of things, the most likely destinations are Pitt, Penn State, or Kentucky. 

Because of this format, they would be all-but guaranteed to have to play one of the top 16 teams in the country by the second round, so the ceiling for this team right now is probably the round of 32. Beyond that, they would have to pull off a huge upset. No matter what, this is a great moment for a program that had been falling just short for almost a decade.

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.

17 minutes ago, Tigerone94 said:

So TigersTigers break it to us, why was the team without Lydia Wiers?

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. 

On 10/21/2019 at 3:10 PM, TuTigers2012 said:

They are playing strong! But it all comes down to the tournament.  To bad it isn't hosted by the team with the best record.

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.

3 hours ago, RundaPower said:

Fortunatelywe are in a conference that gives us the opportunity to play ranked teams every week.   However, fighting up hill in the polls all year has playoff implications.  

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.

10 hours ago, TSU88 said:

I don’t know what to make of Drexel. They have 6 guys who average in double digits; that’s practically unheard of. They beat C of C & Houston (who is 13-3, btw). But they lost to UNCW & Loyola MD.  

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).