Mid D1 - Who are the better teams at this level?

[TaaDaa]

I was reading another thread and they were speculating that there are some DII schools that have programs that could be comparable to some mid-level DI programs.

So I got to thinking.....who/what are some of the better mid-DI volleyball programs? Are there any that would be comparable to some of the top DI teams? And what makes them so good? No need to get too technical unless you are really passionate about it..I'm just curious!

[vbnerd]

First off, define "mid-major" - are we saying an economic mid-major? That being any school outside the Big 5? Or do you want to take Long Beach, Hawaii off the board also? How about the Mo Val?

[TaaDaa]

Good question! I don't know how to define it...what would you think? And I wasn't really thinking based on economic status - strictly volleyball.

[bucky415]

Ohio and Western Kentucky would immediately come to mind. Dayton as well if you consider the A-10 mid D1. Those programs make the NCAA tournament a lot and have been able to knock off good teams from what used to be the BCS conferences with some regularity.

[chancelucky]

I've seen upper level d2 and low level d1. There are definitely d2 teams that can beat lower level d1 teams. At the same time, that doesn't mean that the level of play in the d2 conference is comparable to the d1 conference. The matches between the top 2-4 teams might be very good, but 3/4 of the time you're not playing a top four team in your conference. In other words, if you took the top 12 d2 teams and made them play each other all the time, the level of play might well be comparable to a lower level d1 conference, but much of the time it's not like that.