L.A. UNIVERSITY BEAT / WENDY WITHERSPOON : Seedings Weaken Volleyball Tournament

Ho-hum, another NCAA women’s volleyball tournament, another year when the NCAA final four probably will not showcase the best four teams in the nation.

If members of the NCAA women’s volleyball committee ever wondered why there is not greater interest for the sport, they might consider this.

The four regional brackets in the women’s volleyball tournament do not provide equal opportunity for reaching the NCAA semifinals. Because of this, the nation’s top teams often are knocked out of the tournament early. When the top teams are gone, interest drops and the meaning of the national championship, ultimately, is lessened.

The reason for the inequity in the regional brackets is simple: The committee seeds all but the top four teams regionally, rather than nationally.

This might be fair if the level of play in the four geographic regions of the country were equal, but it’s not. Western teams traditionally have dominated the sport.

So, because many of the nation’s top teams are lumped together in the West or Northwest regions, they eliminate each other from contention early in the tournament.

This season, the West Region is particularly strong. The top four teams in the West Region all were ranked among the top 10 in the nation in the final regular-season poll, including top-ranked UCLA (29-1) and sixth-ranked Stanford (22-6), the defending national champion. This set up a rematch of last season’s NCAA final too early in this year’s tournament: Stanford plays at UCLA on Friday in the West Region semifinals.

“I don’t ever remember a regional being so strong as this has been,” said Coach Andy Banachowski, who has led the Bruins to 10 final four appearances and three NCAA titles in 27 years. “That’s all I can say without getting in trouble.”

Granted, the NCAA women’s volleyball tournament has come a long way since it began in 1981. Kudos to the committee for this season’s improvements: expanding the tournament from 32 teams to 48, extending invitations to more conference champions, and also seeding the top four teams in the nation and placing them in different regions.

But that is not enough.

It is time for the committee to do away with regional seeding altogether and provide for a nationally seeded tournament, as is done in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.

Women’s volleyball committee members from the West and Northwest regions have tried to push the idea on the committee for years.

Said USC Coach Lisa Love, whose 13th-ranked Trojans lost at Stanford in a second round-match on Saturday: “It irritates me that we won’t seed this tournament nationally. I think that women’s volleyball merits that and I’m disappointed that we can’t get the rest of the country to saddle up, more or less, and play that way.”

The main obstacles are committee members from the South and Mideast regions. They fear that Western teams would dominate their regions and the NCAA final four.

But they underestimate the quality of teams in their regions. UC Santa Barbara (28-4), one of the four top-seeded teams this season, was defeated by Minnesota (22-10) in a second-round match in the Mideast Region on Sunday.

This shows that, although Western teams have traditionally dominated the sport, teams from other regions can compete with them.

Another obstacle to national seeding, of course, is money. It is expensive to send teams all over the nation for tournament games.

Cindy Lewis, associate athletic director at Hofstra and head of the NCAA women’s volleyball committee, said that while national seeding is needed, it is not financially feasible now. But there is a possibility that it will happen in the future, especially if the NCAA women’s volleyball final four continues to sell out, as it is expected to do for the first time at the 11,500 capacity Wisconsin Field House on Dec. 16 and 18.

At the NCAA final four this month, the committee will present a proposal for enhancing regional seeding, which would include realigning the regions, to the NCAA Division I women’s volleyball coaches. If the coaches accept it, the committee will vote to adopt it in February for next season.

Women’s volleyball must find a way to increase revenue, to rid itself of its provincial way of thinking and to provide a true national championship.

Now that would be interesting.

Notes

Kristine Quance, who set an American record in the 200-meter breaststroke at the U.S. Open on Saturday, has a chance to become USC’s first woman NCAA champion since 1985. In addition to the 200 breaststroke, Quance swims both individual medley events and the 200 butterfly.