BOSTON - A wild America East volleyball regular-season concluded a Sunday afternoon and finished with Co-Regular Season Champions and a three-way tie for third as the 2015 conference tournament bracket was set. For the third-straight year, the road to the America East volleyball title will go through Durham, N.H., as New Hampshire earned the No. 1 seed and a share of the regular-season title. The Wildcats are joined by No. 2 seed and co-regular season champions, Albany, along with No. 3 seed Stony Brook and No. 4 seed Binghamton.
The 2015 America East Volleyball Championship will be held Friday, Nov. 20 and Saturday, Nov. 21 at the University of New Hampshire. Second-seeded Albany will face No. 3 Stony Brook at 4 p.m., followed by No. 1 seed New Hampshire vs. No. 4 Binghamton at 7 p.m. The title match will be played on Saturday, Nov. 21 at 5 p.m. All games will be available live for free on AmericaEast.TV.
New Hampshire and Albany finished tied for the America East regular season title with identical 11-1 conference records after the Wildcats swept UMBC on Sunday. The tiebreak came all the way down to point winning percentage in conference matches as the Wildcats and Great Danes were even in the first five steps of the tiebreak. The Wildcats edged the Great Danes by winning 930 of 1,628 conference points (57.1%) compared to 1,005 of 1,827 (55.1%) for Albany. The Great Danes will be the No. 2 seed.
Stony Brook, Binghamton and UMBC finished in a three-way tie for third with 6-6 conference records, and a tiebreak would be needed to determine the final two spots in the championship. The three-way tie happened after Stony Brook and UMass Lowell both earned wins on Sunday while UMBC fell to New Hampshire.
The three teams all split head-to-head meetings, giving them identical 2-2 records in the first tiebreak. The second tiebreak is winning percentage in conference sets vs. the other teams that are tied. In this instance, Stony Brook had a 9-6 record in sets vs. UMBC and Binghamton, compared to 7-8 for UMBC and 7-9 for Binghamton, giving the Seawolves the No. 3 seed.
UMBC and Binghamton then go back to a head-to-head tiebreak. The teams split head-to-head meetings and split sets against each other, 4-4. The next line of the tiebreak goes to points won vs. each other. In this case, Binghamton had won 188 points compared to 184 in the two matches the teams played against each other. This gave the Bearcats the fourth and final spot in the tournament. Pleas see the tiebreak criteria below for a further explanation.
The 2015 America East Volleyball Championship will begin with the annual awards banquet on Thursday, Nov. 19.
Tie-Break Criteria. Ties shall be broken from the top of the standings down. In the event of a tie between two or more teams, the tie shall be broken using the following criteria in order
i. Winning percentage in conference matches versus the other teams with which it is tied (i.e. head-to-head competition).
ii. Winning percentage in conference sets versus the other teams with which it is tied.
iii. Point winning percentage in sets versus the other teams with which it is tied. Point winning percentage is computed by dividing total points won by total points played (i.e. points won plus points lost).
iv. Winning percentage in conference matches versus the other conference opponents in descending rank order. In the event of arriving at another group of tied teams when comparing records, each team’s record (winning percentage) versus the combined tied teams is used rather than the performance versus the individual tied teams.
v. Total sets won in conference matches.
vi. Point winning percentage in conference sets. Point winning percentage computed by dividing total points won by total points played (i.e. points won plus points lost).
vii. Draw conducted by the Commissioner or his/her designee.
Once a tie is broken among three or more teams, immediately return to (1) to break the tie between the remaining teams.