At the beginning of the season, the women's volleyball team had one goal: to make the NCAA Tournament. Between now and when the NCAA Division I Women's Volleyball Committee announces the 64-team field for the tournament Nov. 25, the season hangs in the balance as the Cavaliers play the second half of their ACC schedule.
"We've improved on several aspects of our game," senior libero Melissa Caldwell said. "If we can clean up a few more things and start playing steadier, I think that in the second half of the ACC season we will come out with a better record than the first."
With a little more than a month left until the postseason, the Cavaliers are 13-8 (8-4 ACC) and third in the ACC behind Clemson and Duke. This is not a good position from which Virginia can make a run at the postseason. The tournament selection committee awards 31 teams automatic qualification and fills the remaining 33 slots with at-large bids. To give one a sense of the relative strength of ACC volleyball, Duke was the only ACC team in the 2006 tournament.
The selection committee picks the teams for the tournament by taking into account factors such as poll consideration, the team's record and strength of schedule, the latter two of which are combined to find a team's rank in the Rating Percentage Index. The Cavaliers' rank in the RPI was 72 as of Oct. 7, when the team was 10-6. At that point, the Cavaliers had beaten three teams with a better RPI: Florida St. (66), Georgia Tech (63) and Arizona State (57).
The first chance Virginia had to beat a team with a better RPI since Oct. 7 came this past weekend in Durham, N.C.. The Cavaliers played Duke, who is 34th in the RPI, to the fifth game, but ultimately lost the match.
"I wouldn't say it was the best execution of the game of volleyball, but we played with a lot of intensity and desire and therefore we were in every game," coach Melissa Aldrich Shelton said. "[Winning] definitely would have been huge and would have helped our RPI, but the good news about the ACC is that we get to play them again."
Of the Cavaliers' final 10 matches, four are against the ACC teams with a higher RPI (Duke, Clemson, Georgia Tech and Florida State), and three of those matches are at home. Winning those matches would go a long way toward helping the Cavaliers reach the tournament.
"We need to make sure we beat those teams ... [and we] are excited that we get them at home; we feel like that is a great advantage," Shelton said. "The way the RPI works is those are the three teams that are going to help us, and we need to get our RPI higher."
In the current ACC standings, Virginia ranks above two teams that had a higher RPI, Georgia Tech and Florida State. Since the RPI came out, the Cavaliers have gone 3-2, losing to Duke and Virginia Tech. Georgia Tech, which was also 10-6 as of Oct 7., has posted a similar record, losing to Clemson and Duke. Florida State was 6-9 in the RPI rankings and now stands 8-11.
"We still have a shot at finishing even higher in the conference than third, where we stand right now," Shelton said. "We just need to take care of business ... [and] to make sure we can control what we can and win out the rest of the season."
The Duke match gave the Cavaliers hope because they battled down to the very last point. If Virginia can play its final 10 matches with the same intensity, an at-large tournament bid may be within reach.
"That match was dictated by the final two points and ... it is hard to come back after that and keep working as hard as we had before," Caldwell said. "But at the same time, it proves that we are right up there with the top teams and that our hard work is paying off"
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