The DII women’s volleyball championship began on Dec. 5 with 64 teams in the hunt for glory. Now, the final eight head to the Stanford Pentagon in Sioux Falls, South Dakota for the three-day finals to crown the next national champion.
It is an interesting field in the sense that there are very little surprises, but yet, despite Gannon being back in the finals (again), there are no DII women’s volleyball title-holding heavyweights. Defending champion Cal State LA isn’t here — the Golden Eagles didn’t even make it out of the first round. There’s no Concordia-St. Paul, Tampa, nor West Texas A&M — at least one of these three powerhouses has been in the national championship match in 15 of the past 17 tournaments — and they are three of the winningest programs of all time.
We have a field of eight teams each looking for its first national championship. But again, none of these teams is surprising. Every team that advanced to the quarterfinals was either a No. 1 or a No. 2 seed in their respective region. In fact, six No. 1 seeds — Angelo State, Bentley, Gannon, Ferris State, Lynn and Wingate — are in the finals and No. 2 seeds San Francisco State and Central Oklahoma each defeated the No. 1 seed in their region to get here. We were…
