Sports Hawaii

http://www.ncaa.com/rankings/volleyball ... eyball-rpi

Hawaii lost at home to #2 Wisconsin, #8 UCLA, #10, Washington, #14 Kansas St, and a win over #37 Arizona.
Versus Wisconsin, and Kansas St the Wahine was without Nikki Taylor, Annie Mitchem and front-row starter Kalei Greeley. Versus UCLA and Washington, the Wahine had Nikki Taylor back but still no Mitchem blocking/hitting from the front-row.

Bottom line, this computer generated RPI have no subjective/objective human observation skills (human intelligence that knows volleyball, the teams, the tradition, the quality of athletes per team, etc.).…and it does not take into account AVCA’s coaches poll…It is deeply flawed. It is top-heavy with teams that have no chance at all of going deep into the NCAA tournament. The Southeast (only Florida is a credible volleyball power) and the Atlantic Coast is no volleyball powerhouse…LOL this is not BASKETBALL or FOOTBALL where the BCS conference programs are legitimate contenders.

Hawaii at #40! No way is Missouri, Western KENTUCKY, CREIGHTON, UNLV, PITTSBURGH, MARQUETTE, BOISE ST, DAYTON, BAYLOR, WICHITA ST, MIAMI (OH), ARIZONA, CLEVELAND ST ARE BETTER THE WAHINE. THOSE ARE ONLY A FEW OF THE TEAMS THAT ARE RATED AHEAD OF THE WAHINE.

Bottom line, there will be a very unhappy hosting school when Hawaii is sent to its sub-regional.

LOL…if you’re a betting man, it’ll be Washington, UCLA, or USC. A cohesive-healthy Wahine team, playing with a SET lineup will be load. I like the Wahine chances of going deep into the NCAA tournament. Hopefully, coach Shoji, starting with this weekend will finally have a set lineup. No more flip-flopping Mitchem…and at this point, I definitely think Natasha Burns, at this point, is better suited to start than Castillo.

The wins at Riverside and Fullerton revealed the Wahine is still far being a cohesive unit; but, if coach continues with the line-up that started this past weekend--with more reps playing together, cohesion should follow. Time is running out…no more flip-flopping players, a SET lineup is the KEY if a FINAL FOUR is the goal…NO IFs or BUTs this is the year for the Wahine to make a statement.

OH Annie Mitchem 6-3 OH/Makenna Granato 6-0 So
MB Emily Maglio 6-4 Jr/Natasha Burns 6-5 RsFr
Setter Norene Iosia 5-11 Fr
Opposite Nikki Taylor 6-4 Sr
Libero Savanah Kahakai 5-8 Jr
DS Emma Smith 5-8 Fr/Claire Anderson 5-7 Jr

And…coach should forget about Kalei Greeley contributing in the front-row. She is far from being the same steady, dependable front-row terminator/blocker that she was last year.

Agree with all of your points. RPI system is horrible but is probably the most objective of ways to rate the teams besides head to head match ups. National polls are subjective, so coaches and/or sports writers who may have never seen some of the teams vote on their guess.

the RPI is a horribly oversimplified, several decades old formula in need of a major revamp. It has some huge verified flaws, but the worst thing about it is that they use it to incorrectly grant home team advantage (a real advantage) for the women's volleyball tournament. what Hawaii and/or the big west should do is hire math/statistics/cs/engineering major student(s) to dump all game results (decades of results, all public released) into a database and simulate what the RPI would be if say they scheduled middle of the road teams in a big conference vs their best team, and come up with a simple non-conference scheduling gameplan that takes advantage of the obvious RPI flaws. After getting it to work for you, pass that same info to the rest of the teams in your conference and suggest they follow the same rules. Doing that brings up the rating of everyone in the conference, which in turn brings up Hawaii's rating even more.