GOPHERS RATED #3 IN THE COUNTRY
National rankings are always mysterious and unreliable, and never as much as during a pandemic. The pandemic has affected rankings is two ways: 1) Most teams in most sports have been limited to conference-only competition, making it difficult to compare across conferences (example A, the Big Ten was supposed to be the strongest conference in the country in Men’s Basketball – until they fell on their faces in the NCAA tournament); 2) In addition to the usual injuries, we’ve seen players and teams miss matches due to covid rules. It’s great to see the Gophers rated so high, and maybe it will help with their seeding for the NCAAs, but it means less than ever this year.
I can’t begrudge Wisconsin their #1 rating; they have everyone back from last season’s (2019) team that made it to the National Championship Match, and they’re unbeaten, so they deserve their ranking. But they haven’t played hardly anyone; their only significant challenge being their one-match victory over the Gophers without our setter or libero. (To be fair, Wisconsin didn’t have their setter for that match either.)
But the latest ratings are curious: The Gophers (13 & 2) moved up from #4 to #3 based on our sweep of a not-very-good Northwestern, Nebraska (14 & 2, including a split with the Gophs) moved up from #5 to #4 based on their sweep of a not-very-good Michigan, and Kentucky (19 & 1) moved up from #3 to #2, based on their sweep of a not-very-good Alabama, all at the expense of Texas (21 & 1) who slipped to #5 based on beating 9th ranked Baylor at Baylor, but losing at home, in 5 sets, to 24th ranked Rice. Probably tough for Longhorn fans to swallow.
The Gophs finish their scheduled matches at home this weekend vs a not-very-good Iowa, Friday @ 5:00 on BTN+ & FSN+ (a broadcast station for those without cable), and Saturday @ 3:00 on ESPNU (I ‘ll not be able to watch this one.) The most interesting match-up of the weekend will be Penn State, who needs at least one win to get “off the bubble,” at Nebraska for a pair.
Then the NCAA pairings will be announced on Sunday. If the Pairings follow the current rankings, the Gophers could be in a position to reach the NCAA Championship Match without playing other Big Ten Teams.
As of now, this year’s tournament will include only 48 teams, 32 conference winners and 16 at-large teams. Lately, some, including Nebraska Coach John Cook and Wisconsin Coach Kelly Sheffield, have publicly complained about this, drawing comparisons to the men’s & women’s basketball tournaments, which started last weekend with the standard 64 teams.
Ordinarily, I wouldn’t expect complaining to change anything, but the NCAA responded quickly to bad pub regarding inequality between the men’s & women’s basketball facilities, so who knows?