How to watch the Wildcats’ fate on Sunday
The Arizona Wildcats did everything they could down the stretch to state their case to the NCAA volleyball selection committee. The team will gather on Sunday for a belated Thanksgiving and to watch the NCAA Women’s Volleyball Selection Show.
The committee has a list of criteria for the selection of at-large teams. First and foremost, teams must have at least a .500 record to be considered. The overall record and strength of schedule are probably the two most important factors since they influence several other selection criteria.
The volleyball selection committee has both primary and secondary criteria that it applies. The primary criteria are RPI, head-to-head competition, results against common opponents, significant wins and losses, and KPI. Secondary criteria are performance over the last 10 matches of the season, availability of athletes, and match location.
“My pitch to the committee?” Arizona head coach Rita Stubbs asked. “How we finished and the level of play that we’re playing now. The adversity with the travel that we endured, because…to go 7-0 on the back end with the extra travel, the drive, the Thanksgiving flight yesterday, competing today, against teams that are in a position where all they’re trying to do is upset people. I mean, I’m excited.I would want someone like us in. I would think many teams wouldn’t want to play us, either.”
What are the positives and negatives of Arizona’s case?
Record
Arizona finished with 20 wins for the first time since 2018, ending at 20-9. The Wildcats went 22-11 overall and 11-9 in the Pac-12 six years ago, the last time they made the NCAA Tournament field.
They went 9-9 in the Big 12, ending with a .500 (or better) record in league play for the first time since the same year. That record put them 7th in the Big 12 final standings despite being picked to finish 12th in the 15-team league.
Ratings
The various rating systems have the Wildcats near the middle of the bubble but well within the historic range of teams that get selected.
RPI is the most significant rating system since it constitutes the NCAA’s in-house rankings. Arizona sat at No. 44 after matches were completed on Nov. 29.
Last season, the selection committee took five at-large teams with RPIs between 38 and 47: No. 38 UC Santa Barbara, No. 39 Texas State, No. 40 Minnesota, No. 45 Miami (FL), and No. 47 Georgia.
The demise of the Pac-12 could also benefit Arizona. An extra at-large bid is available this year because the Pac-12 doesn’t have an automatic qualifier. The damage to Washington State since the old conference collapsed has also taken out a perennial tournament team.
If the committee relies on the KPI, it could be a problem for Arizona. That index considers match location and score as well as results and opponents’ ratings. It has the team at No. 58.
The Wildcats take fairly significant hits for their losses to Colorado and Kansas State at home in the KPI. They get their largest boosts from wins over BYU and Kansas, but those are not quite as big as they could be due to the games being played in McKale Center. The number of four- and five-set matches they won also affects them.
The system that likes the Wildcats the most is the regular Massey Rating. That system has Arizona at No. 40, a jump of 13 spots. However, the Massey Power Rating is closer to the KPI, placing UA at No. 52.
Nonconference schedule
The Wildcats had a very weak nonconference slate. That’s not open for debate. While Stubbs pointed to the home loss to Colorado as a match that could come back to haunt them, the nonconference schedule is a more likely culprit if things don’t go as the team hopes.
The average RPI of Arizona’s nonconference opponents is 221. With 347 teams in Division I volleyball, the teams the Wildcats chose to play ended in the bottom third of the sport.
The best nonconference opponent was VCU at No. 92. The worst was Texas Southern at No. 321. Six of the 11 teams Arizona faced before Big 12 play ended the season ranked No. 255 or worse.
While Stubbs said that she follows the philosophy of former head coach Dave Rubio by aiming for no more than two losses before conference play, that likely could have been accomplished with more opponents in the top 150 and fewer outside the top 250.
Arizona’s opponents did get much tougher in conference play, as expected. The average RPI of conference opponents is 76. The Wildcats played nine of its 18 league matches against teams in the top 20 of the RPI. They went 2-7 in those matches.
The tough matches were not scattered over the schedule, either. Arizona played as many RPI top 20 teams in the first half of the league schedule as Kansas State played the entire Big 12 season.
However, the selection committees in many sports hold the nonconference SOS against a bubble team precisely because it’s a choice the coaches make. The fact that conference opponents were much stronger may not outweigh that.
Significant wins and losses
Arizona had its best season in recent history when it comes to significant wins.
In spring 2021, the Wildcats beat No. 7 Stanford in two matches to start the pandemic-delayed 2020 season. However, that Stanford team had a severely depleted roster due to injury and illness. The Cardinal had also dealt with some of the harshest practice restrictions in the country due to regulations in place in Santa Clara County, Calif. Even then-head coach Dave Rubio said it wasn’t a typical Stanford team. So, beating teams ranked No. 8 and No. 20 by the AVCA was a huge deal for the 2024 Wildcats.
When the Wildcats defeated No. 20 BYU on Oct. 2, it became their first top 20 win since 2022 when they won against No. 20 Washington. The victory over the Cougars was also UA’s first Big 12 conference win.
Just over a month later, Arizona had an even bigger win. The team defeated then-No. 8 Kansas to get its first top 10 win in a non-pandemic season since 2016. The Wildcats defeated No. 9 UCLA that year.
As for significant losses, the worst loss on Arizona’s slate is to Kansas State. KSU has an RPI of No. 109 largely based on its nonconference schedule. The other Wildcats finished just one game behind UA in the Big 12 standings but went 2-7 prior to league play.
The home loss to Colorado turned out to be more significant than it looked at the time. When the match was played, Arizona was No. 57 in RPI and CU was No. 58. It was a toss-up at the time. The five-set loss wasn’t desirable but it wasn’t shocking from a statistical point of view. However, the teams’ fortunes went in opposite directions shortly after that as evidenced by Arizona’s sweep of the Buffaloes in Boulder last week. CU sits at No. 89 the day before selection Sunday.
Last 10 matches
If the last 10 matches are important to the selection committee, Arizona should be a shoe-in. The Wildcats went 7-3 over that period including a 7-0 run to end the season. They played three ranked teams (two on the road) and went 1-2 against those teams.
Although the schedule wasn’t as stacked for six of the final seven games, the demands on Arizona made them much tougher than RPI indicates.
The Wildcats started the seven-match streak with a win over Kansas, its final ranked opponent of the season. It was also the last game of anything approaching a sane travel schedule.
Arizona left the following Wednesday to fly to Cincinnati for a Thursday match. It beat a Bearcats team that was on an upswing. Cinci went on the road the next week and beat then-No. 24 BYU.
The day after winning in Ohio, the Wildcats had to board a bus bound for Morgantown, W. Va. Lack of direct flights and no funds for charters made the five-hour bus trip the best option.
Arizona was in West Virginia until Sunday when it played at 10 a.m. MST. The positive part was that the group had been back East long enough to adapt to the time change.
The Wildcats beat the Mountaineers in straight sets, then they climbed back on a bus and headed to Pittsburgh to catch the first leg of their flights back to Tucson. They arrived at the Tucson International Airport around 12:30 a.m. on Monday.
Their earliest obligations were at 8 a.m. and first classes were at 11. In the evening, they attended a mandatory presentation on gambling despite the fact that only 1.6 percent of college women gamble on a weekly basis (compared to 15 percent of their male peers).
Tuesday was practice, classes, and a meet-and-greet with fans. They were back on a flight at noon the next day to get to Boulder.
Thursday’s match in Boulder was scheduled for 6 p.m. MST. Arizona had to catch another commercial flight at 10:25 p.m. the same night to get back to Tucson and play a Saturday match at 2 p.m. It was a good thing they defeated the Buffs in straight sets.
“I don’t know how they thought this was a good idea,” Stubbs said about the Big 12 scheduling an away meet Thursday evening and a home meet Saturday afternoon.
It wasn’t the last time, either. The Wildcats did get to play two straight matches at home, defeating Iowa State on Saturday and UCF on Wednesday. They even drew over 1,500 fans for an early afternoon match the day before Thanksgiving. But they had to deal with more flight difficulties to get to Lubbock for the final match on Friday.
Arizona was supposed to fly out of Tucson shortly after the UCF match on Wednesday. It didn’t work out.
The airline pushed the flight back to Thanksgiving day. The Wildcats had to travel and practice on Thursday then play at noon on Friday. Once again, they pulled through despite the challenges.
While the challenges certainly would have been fewer if charters had been available for at least some of the trips, the question of why the Big 12 scheduled matches in this fashion also looms large.
“None of it looks the way that they initially said to us it was going to look,” Stubbs said. “And so one was…we will be a Thursday-Saturday conference…and so if you were on the road, then you weren’t expected to fly far…but I think once they actually put it on paper, it didn’t work out the way that they thought it was going to work. Hence us changing next year.”
The committee may not know how much it took for the Wildcats just to get to matches and keep up with their obligations back home. Stubbs certainly knows what her players dealt with over the final few weeks, though. That makes the seven-match winning streak all the sweeter. She hopes they reap the benefits of fighting through.