NCAA Men's Volleyball Tournament


The NCAA Men's Volleyball Tournament, officially titled the NCAA National Collegiate Men's Volleyball Championship, is an annual competition that determines the National Collegiate Athletic Association championship in American college men's volleyball. It had been the only NCAA championship in the sport from 1970 until 2012, when the NCAA launched a Division III championship.
In the past, schools from the Pacific Coast region have dominated this sport, in particular UCLA with coach Al Scates leading the program to 19 NCAA titles. However, in recent years Midwestern teams have made their presence known in men's volleyball, winning 5 of the last 7 national championships. Ohio State leads the Midwest in national championships, with 3 total national championships.

Competition structure

Before the 2011–12 school year, men's volleyball did not have an official divisional structure; even now, that structure is truncated. The National Collegiate Championship remains as the NCAA's top-level championship, but Division III members now have their own championship event.
With the introduction of an official Division III championship, schools in that division are no longer eligible for the National Collegiate Championship. The last exception was Rutgers–Newark, whose men's volleyball program had been a grandfathered scholarship program, and could compete for the National Collegiate Championship through 2014. Rutgers–Newark completed a transition to Division III men's volleyball at the end of that season, and joined the D-III Continental Volleyball Conference effective with the 2015 season.
There are three general regions for men's volleyball: "West", "Midwest", and "East". Four "major conferences", defined here as leagues that include full members of Division I, represent these regions. The three "traditional" major conferences are the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation, Midwestern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association, and Eastern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association. In the 2018 season, the ranks of "major" conferences expanded to include the Big West Conference, the first Division I all-sports conference ever to sponsor men's volleyball. As of the next NCAA men's volleyball season in 2021, two Division II conferences will sponsor men's volleyball at the National Collegiate level. Conference Carolinas was the first NCAA conference ever to sponsor men's volleyball as a scholarship sport, having launched its men's volleyball league in the 2012 season. The 2021 season will be the first for the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, which will have six men's volleyball members. CC has had an automatic berth in the National Collegiate championship since the 2014 season, and the Big West received an automatic berth upon the creation of its men's volleyball league, while the SIAC will not be eligible for an automatic berth until the 2023 season. Members of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, a separate athletics governing body whose members are primarily smaller institutions, regularly play matches against NCAA teams.
Because of the historic lack of an official divisional structure in men's volleyball, three of the four major conferences have members that normally compete in Division II. Before the creation of the Division III national championship, the EIVA had several Division III members, but all of those schools now compete in D-III men's volleyball. The Big West became the first men's volleyball conference to consist entirely of D-I members in the 2021 season; this immediately followed UC San Diego, previously a Big West affiliate in men's volleyball, starting its transition to Division I and fully joining the Big West.
Through the 2013 tournament, each of the three major conferences received an automatic bid to the Final Four, with one additional at-large bid. The remaining bid was an at-large bid that could be awarded to any team in Division I or II. Generally, the best team not receiving an automatic bid received the at-large bid.
Beginning with the 2014 championship, the field expanded to six teams, with the two new teams being the champion of Conference Carolinas and one extra at-large entry. The new format featured two quarterfinal matches involving the four lowest-seeded teams in the field, with the winners joining the two top seeds in the semifinals. Originally, the quarterfinals were to be played at campus sites, with the Final Four at a separate predetermined site, but it was decided instead to have the entire championship tournament at one site.
With the Big West Conference adding men's volleyball for the 2018 season and qualifying for an automatic tournament berth, the championship now involves seven teams. The bottom two tournament seeds contest a "play-in" match; from that point, the tournament format is identical to the one used from 2014 to 2017.

Division I participation

The number of Division I schools sponsoring men's volleyball has fluctuated between 20 and 24 teams since 1986. No traditional D-I conferences sponsored men's volleyball until the Big West Conference added the sport for the 2018 season. Of the other three major conferences, the Eastern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association and Midwestern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association are volleyball-specific conferences, while the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation is a multi-sport conference of schools whose primary conferences do not sponsor its ten sports. In addition to the 23 D-I schools, 26 Division II schools competed in D-I volleyball in the coronavirus-shortened 2020 men's volleyball season:
The Division II Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference will begin men's volleyball competition in the 2021 season with six newly launched teams, all full conference members—Benedict, Central State, Fort Valley State, Kentucky State, Morehouse, and Paine. Additionally, D'Youville, a Division III member which played the 2020 season in its full-time home of the Allegheny Mountain Collegiate Conference, will join the National Collegiate division for the 2021 season as it starts a transition to Division II and the East Coast Conference, which sponsors volleyball only for women.
Division II does not have a separate national championship, and neither Division I nor II has a sufficient number of teams to sponsor a national championship without the other.

Champions

†Vacated due to NCAA violations

Team titles

School#Year won
UCLA191970, 1971, 1972, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1979, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1987, 1989, 1993, 1995, 1996, 1998, 2000, 2006
Pepperdine51978, 1985, 1986, 1992, 2005
Southern California41977, 1980, 1988, 1990
UC Irvine42007, 2009, 2012, 2013
Ohio State32011, 2016, 2017
BYU31999, 2001, 2004
Long Beach State31991, 2018, 2019
Penn State21994, 2008
Stanford21997, 2010
Loyola Chicago22014, 2015
Vacated2''2002, 2003
San Diego State11973

Past tournaments

Historically, California-based universities have dominated the men's volleyball national championship; Loyola Chicago, Penn State, Ohio State and BYU are the only non-California universities to have won the National Collegiate championship; Hawaii and Lewis also won the championship tournament, but had their victories vacated due to NCAA rules violations. Only seven non-California universities have participated in the National Collegiate championship match, although other universities such as Princeton and Ball State have participated in the final four. Only four finals have involved two non-California schools: the 2003 final, when Lewis defeated BYU but had its win vacated; the 2015 final, in which Loyola defeated Lewis; and the 2016 and 2017 finals, when Ohio State defeated BYU.
UCLA, Southern California, Penn State, Stanford, and Long Beach State are the only schools in Division I to have won an NCAA national championship in both men and women's volleyball. In addition, Stanford and Penn State are the only universities whose men and women's volleyball programs won the national championship in the same academic year. The 2016 championship tournament took place from May 3–7 at Rec Hall on the campus of Penn State.

2011

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