It’s official: The UW volleyball squad has earned the 14th seed in the NCAA tournament and will also be hosting the first two rounds of the tournament at the Field House. The Badgers (23-8) will welcome Alabama A&M (24-7) this Friday night at 7 p.m.; prior to that game Duke (24-9) will take on Miami (25-5) at 5 p.m.
“I was just very, very happy,” captain Erin Byrd said with a huge grin on her face. “It is great to be hosting, and we were hoping if we won both of our matches this weekend that we would be hosting. It is hard to ever know what they (the NCAA selection committee) will do.”
In the volleyball NCAA tournament, only the top 16 teams are ranked, and the coaches were notified before the brackets were released that the teams were placed regardless of geographic proximity. The NCAA committee did say, however, that it would try to avoid conference matchups such as the one last year during which UW ended up taking on Big Ten foe Michigan State in the second round.
Entrance into the tournament was automatic for 31 teams who won their conference titles, and the remaining 33 teams were awarded at-large bids. This will be the Badgers 11th NCAA tournament appearance and their seventh consecutive year to participate in the tournament.
While the Badgers have found out who they will be playing in the first round, team members readily admit they doesn’t know much about Alabama A&M and have some work to do to get ready for the matchup.
“I really don’t know anything about Alabama A&M, but we have an automatic video exchange with them,” head coach Pete Waite explained. “Duke is a team we have seen this year and have beaten, so we already have tape on them, and we will get another one.
“Miami of Florida is a brand-new program, but I do know their coaches; it is a very good friend of mine, actually, and one of my former players when I was in Northern Illinois is married to the assistant coach.”
Byrd agreed with her coach, saying, “I have never even heard of any of the players on Alabama A&M, and it will be fun to see whom they have and what is their style of play.”
Not only were the Badgers rewarded for their impressive regular-season play, the Big Ten as a whole showed up strong in the brackets as eight of the 11 Big Ten teams were granted entrance into the tournament.
Michigan, Michigan State, Northwestern and Indiana all made the tournament as unranked teams, and Ohio State (15), Wisconsin (14), Minnesota (7) and Penn State (13) earned seeds in the top 16 of the tournament.
“I think in general the Big Ten was really pretty bizarre this year,” captain Morgan Shields said. “Everyone in the Big Ten was really pretty good, so it was just nice to see eight teams make it, because they all deserve it.”
Although the Badgers have secured home-court advantage for the first two rounds, the NCAA committee has left the next rounds unassigned as the decision for hosting will be held off until after the first two rounds are played and attendance figures are analyzed.
If the Badgers win both games this weekend and have good-sized crowds, then there is a chance the Field House will play host to more games.
“Just the fact that the last time out we have 6,700 out here (the Field House) is fantastic and I think that even boosted us a little higher in the rankings,” Waite said.
“The NCAA has to look at that. If we win this weekend there is a chance that we could even host the next round. You never know if we have attendance figures better than the next opponent and we would love to host all the way up until the final four. If the fans keep coming out, especially the students, they could boost us and help us even more.”
