How does Men's Volleyball Brackets work?

[gauchoadam]

I saw a post on the UCSB board, and I wondered the same thing. How does the Div.I Men's Volleyball Brackets actually work? The post also indicated that there always seems to be a MPSF team, two midwestern schools and an east coast school each year in the finals.

What I gathered from the SB Newspress article and elsewhere is that the winner of the MPSF Finals goes to the Final Four. I'm guessing then, that the winner of the EIVA & MIVA also have byes to the Final Four. Where does the fourth team come from then? Is the MPSF regarded as the Western Region in what would be the Men's Championship? And hence the MPSF Semi-Finals would be like the Sweet 16, MPSF Finals Elite 8 etc?

Thanks for any clarification, cause I couldn't find anything on ncaa.org etc.

[banthony2]

The Men's bracket is only 4 teams large.

There are three teams that earn automatic berths for winning their conference tournaments.

Those conferences are the MIVA, EIVA and MPSF. So you automatically have an east coast, midwest and a west coast team in the championships.

The last spot is awarded to the next best team in the country who did not win an automatic berth. This is almost always awarded to an MPSF team since they are generally the best teams in the nation. This year if Pepperdine wins the MPSF tournament, the at-large will go to the winner of the UCI-BYU semifinal. This at-large could go to a DIII team if they deserved it, but it never has. I would not use such terms as Sweet 16 and Elite 8 because there are only 3 conferences, and you can lose in your conference tournament yet still make it to the Final Four.

I hope this clears things up a bit.

[baywatcher]

Last year there was talk of expanding the men's tournament. I'm sure that comes up periodically. Perhaps someone in the know can clarify the proposals and standing of the idea.

[bunnywailer]

gauchoadam said:

I saw a post on the UCSB board, and I wondered the same thing. How does the Div.I Men's Volleyball Brackets actually work? The post also indicated that there always seems to be a MPSF team, two midwestern schools and an east coast school each year in the finals.

Huh? There's only ever been one year where the at-large bid has not come out of the West region.

Two midwestern schools? Only in 1994.

[bunnywailer]

Here's the 2007 Men's Volleyball Championship Handbook. The structure of the NCAA Championships and the at-large selection criteria are on page 9.

www.ncaa.org/library/handbooks/volleyball/2007/2007_m_volleyball_handbook.pdf