Power Five kills hopes of smaller conferences

If there were any lingering doubts about the widening chasm between the power conferences and everybody else in NCAA women’s volleyball, this week should have removed them.

Any notions that schools from so-called mid-major conferences can still be championship forces on the national landscape have been forcefully spiked — again — by events of this week.

As we prepare to watch Florida and Nebraska play for the national championship, let’s review the evidence at hand.

Whoever wins today, Gators or Cornhuskers, it will mark the 19th consecutive year that a Power Five conference member has won the title. This year, like most, nobody from beyond the upper crust managed to crash the final four.

Friday Stanford sophomore outside hitter Kathryn Plummer was announced as the 2017 TeamSnap/American Volleyball Coaches Association Division I player of the year, the 15th in a row from among nine Power Five schools to take the award.

And, Wednesday when the AVCA All-American team is announced, and none of the 14 players named to the first team came from beyond the five power conferences (Atlantic Coast, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and Southeast conferences).

Hawaii’s Emily Maglio was the only player from a mid-major conference to even finish on the 14-member second team, the lone outsider among those who are, ostensibly, the top 28 players in the nation.

If you remember when Rainbow Wahine players used to win national player of the year awards, chances are you also recall the days before cable TV and the internet, too.

Not since 2003 has a Rainbow Wahine (Kim Willoughby) won the award. She played in and helped guide UH to three final fours in four years, an achievement that grows even more remarkable with the passage of time.

And it isn’t just UH that has seen its fortunes flip so drastically. It is the old neighborhood — Long Beach State, Pacific and other once-upon-a-time powers who now watch the NCAA tournament’s prime time from a distance, too. Many no longer even gain entrance to the 64-team field.

Between 1986 and 2003 players from mid-major programs won or shared player of the year honors 11 times, including Willoughby, Angelica Ljungqvist (1996) and Teee Williams (1987 and ’89).

That is not counting Deitre Collins, who won the Honda Award, the precursor to the AVCA award, in 1982 and ’83.

The game changer is the big TV contracts that fatten the coffers of the Power Five. They enable a lot more than their football and basketball teams these days. The moolah trickles down to volleyball, softball and other teams as well.

That’s money to invest in attracting the top coaches and bucks to build or improve the best facilities and underwrite recruiting the top-shelf recruits. And, it shows more and more every year.

It has made even the low to middlin’ teams in the Power Five conferences contenders for NCAA tournament berths, pumping up the bottom line Ratings Percentage Index in those conferences.

As the Star-Advertiser’s Cindy Luis presciently warned Dave Shoji well before his retirement from coaching, the day is coming when: “You’re never going to host a (NCAA tournament ) regional again.”

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.