Snubbed! University of Hawaii volleyball gets bypassed for NCAA berth

Talk about a hard landing.

The Hawaii men’s volleyball team had braced itself for the unlikely event of not reaching the NCAA tournament for a second straight year. The Rainbow Warriors were not prepared for the sudden cabin depressurization when returning to Honolulu.

Some three hours into their flight from Los Angeles, Hawaii learned that its season had come to an end via an off-the-court decision by a three-person selection committee. The Warriors (19-8) did not receive an at-large berth into the May 1 first round at UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion, that bid instead going to UC Irvine (21-9), a team Hawaii beat twice in three meetings, including a four-set win in Friday’s Big West tournament semifinals.

“Certainly a head-scratcher from our standpoint,” Warriors coach Charlie Wade said. “There are certainly lots of questions to be asked. Maybe they changed the criteria. For sure the categories they’ve traditionally held important they didn’t this time.

“There’s got to be some transparency to help all of us around the country (with) what criteria they are now using.”

Wade was handed a telex by a flight attendant during the team’s Hawaiian Airlines flight. Former Warrior volleyball player, state senator Kai Kahele (D-Hilo) is also a HAL captain, knew the pilot on the Warriors’ flight and had the cockpit relay the postseason information that had been posted on the UH athletic department website.

While Hawaii’s omission was beyond puzzling, few foresaw what transpired in the rest of the bracket. EIVA champion Harvard (13-13), winning its tournament as a three seed, was seeded No. 5 and will play fourth-seeded UCLA (24-7), an at-large selection in the opening match of the second round on May 1.

Two-time defending national champion Ohio State (23-5), the MIVA tournament champion, is hosting Conference Carolinas champion King (23-5) in Thursday’s opening round. The winner of that match moves on to play UCI in the May 1 second match.

Having byes into the May 3 semifinals are top-seeded Long Beach State (26-1), the Big West champion, and No. 2 seed Brigham Young (22-6). The 49ers will face the winner of the match between UCI and either Ohio State or King, while the Cougars meet the UCLA-Harvard winner in the May 3 opener.

The question of transparency arose when looking at the committee members’ affiliations. Ashley Armstrong is an assistant athletic director at UCLA and Janine Oman is the senior associate athletic director at Ohio State. The third member is Leonard Kaplan, New Jersey Institute of Technology athletic director.

Traditionally, if a selection committee member is affiliated with a school under consideration for an NCAA bid, that member is recused from the discussion. With two members having “a dog in the fight” it perhaps would be time for the selection committee to expand its number to avoid the appearance of collusion or impropriety.

“Our tournament has expanded (to seven) so it follows the committee should expand,” Wade said.

The puzzling piece over the play-in game is based on the Ratings Percentage Index (the computer-generated formula measuring strength of schedule). As of the last update of April 15, Ohio State was at No. 7, King at 13 and Harvard at 22.

The widely held belief going into Sunday was that Harvard would be traveling to King for the play-in match, a distance of 825 miles. Instead, King is traveling the 362 miles from Bristol, Tenn., to Columbus, Ohio, and Harvard is being flown from Boston to Los Angeles.

“We’ve talked about going regional for the first round,” Long Beach State coach Alan Knipe said in a telephone call. “Perhaps with some of the criteria being so close and five (automatic qualifiers), it forced the committee’s hand to go regional.

“I certainly empathize with Hawaii.”

“I’m extremely disappointed for our team,” UH athletic director David Matlin said. “I felt strongly that we had the team to receive an at-large bid.

“I’m proud of the way they fought all season long and I know we’ll come back stronger next year.”

Hawaii loses senior All-Big West libero Larry “Tui” Tuileta and reserve libero Mamane Namahoe. UH also will host the Big West tournament next April.

It was as if the final match of the regular season and Friday’s Big West semifinal didn’t happen nor mattered. Hawaii handed Long Beach State its only loss on the year and then eliminated UC Irvine in the conference tournament, two key wins on the Warriors’ resume that seemingly were not rewarded by the selection committee.

Hawaii’s five-set victory over the 49ers on April 14 came a night after the Warriors’ five-set loss to The Beach. During the same week, UCI lost to UC Santa Barbara which was fifth in the Big West.

Among the factors that the committee looks at are RPI, a team’s record against all others under consideration for the NCAA tournament, and specific head-to-head matchups.

Based on the RPI of April 15, UCI was at No. 4 and Hawaii at 5. The RPI was not updated after Saturday’s conference tournaments were all completed so it’s unclear whether Friday’s victory over the Anteaters on a neutral court moved the Warriors ahead of the Anteaters.

Hawaii ended up with a 2-1 edge head-to-head against UCI with all three matches going four sets. Against teams being considered for the NCAA field, Hawaii was 4-6 and UCI 5-7.

If the Anteaters had an edge, it was in away matches, with an 8-4 record compared to 2-4 for the Warriors. An imbalanced Big West schedule had Hawaii with six home conference matches to UCI’s five, and three of the Warriors’ neutral-court matches were at the Grow the Game in Nashville. The farthest the Anteaters traveled was to Provo to open the season with neutral-site wins over Lewis and Loyola-Chicago; they did pick up two home victories over Mountain Pacific Sports Federation champions Brigham Young, a team that defeated Hawaii in the Outrigger Resorts Invitational finale.

UCI also lost twice to UCLA in a home-and-home series. Hawaii split its matches with the Bruins at the Stan Sheriff Center.

While the Warriors had no “bad losses,” the Anteaters lost at home to Fort Wayne, which finished fifth in the MIVA.