Volleyball 2024

[leatherneckcountry]

Necks sweep UT Martin and will travel to Little Rock for 2 big matches next weekend 

[ST_Lawson]

After the sweep of UT Martin, the volleyball team split a pair at Little Rock, losing 2-3, then winning 3-0. They then lost a match 1-3 at Lindenwood. In the last couple of days, they split a pair with Morehead State, losing 1-3, then winning today 3-2. They are now 10-6 in the OVC and 16-11 overall, and have qualified for the OVC tournament (top 8 teams qualify) which will be held on the campus of the #1 seed on November 24-26. Currently the leaders are SEMO at 11-2, with Lindenwood right behind at 11-3. As of right now, Little Rock is #3 at 10-5 and we're #4 at 10-6.

We finish up the regular season at (currently 3-10 in the OVC) Tennessee State next Thursday and Friday.

[ST_Lawson]

They won the first matchup with Tennessee State, 3-1 yesterday and have now reached their highest win total in a season since 2005 with a 17-11 overall record and 11-6 in the OVC. We're still sitting at #4 in the conference. We finish up our regular season tomorrow at 6 PM with the second match against Tennessee State.
Full OVC standings can be found here: https://ovcsports.com/standings.aspx?path=wvball

We do still have a chance to move up a little in the standings if things go our way. If we win, we're at 12-6 in the conference. Teams ahead of us are:
#1 Lindenwood - currently 12-3 with one against #2 SEMO and two at #3 Little Rock left
#2 Southeast Missouri - currently 12-3 with one at #1 Lindenwood and two against #7 SIUE left
#3 Little Rock - currently 11-5 with two games against #1 Lindenwood

I think if we want to improve our standing going into the conference tournament, we obviously need to win tomorrow (we'd be 12-6), but then we also want Little Rock to lose their two games against #1 Lindenwood, which would put them at 11-7, behind us. If SEMO loses all three of their games (much less likely), then we're tied with them at 12-6, but because we didn't play them this season, the tiebreaker scenario is kinda complicated (overall conference set winning percentage against common opponents), which I'm not going to spend time figuring out at this point.

So, if things go our way, we could end up at #3. Theoretically we could also drop a spot or two, but it's also a much less likely scenario because the two teams closest would have to win at least two of their last three and we'd have to lose just for them to tie us.

[leatherneckcountry]

WIU finished 5th place and get Morehead in the 1st rd

[ST_Lawson]

WIU finished 5th place and get Morehead in the 1st rd

 

Hmm, apparently we lost our last game and Morehead State ended up winning their last four in a row to pass us up. Honestly it doesn't really matter between 4 and 5, because they just play each other, and since the tournament is held at the #1 seed (SEMO), neither of us will be "home".

In the regular season, we split with Morehead in Macomb in early November.

Our game with them will be this Sunday at 7 PM on ESPN+.

[wiu712]

OVC Tournament --  First Round:

#4 Morehead State beat #5 Western in straight sets:  26-24, 25-15, 25-19

Western finishes the season with a 17-13 over-all record.

Attendance at Southeast Missouri State = 100