God you are bitch faces in all sports. All you do is bitch about draws, other coaches and the NCAA.
http://www.theindependent.com/articles/2010/12/12/sports/huskers_hq/hamar/doc4d046be017cef309513073.txtHAMAR: Disjointed tourney has bitter ending for NU volleyball
COMMENTARY
By Bob Hamar
Published: Sunday, December 12, 2010 12:37 AM CST
Nebraska’s volleyball season ended with a bang Friday night.
It just wasn’t the kind of bang the Huskers wanted.
It ended in a disappointing four-set loss to Washington on the Huskies’ home floor in Seattle. It also ended with coaches John Cook of NU and UW’s Jim McLaughlin exchanging words after the match.
McLaughlin, a former coach at Kansas State, had to be restrained. Cook was upset over a late line call on a Washington attack that appeared to be out but was called in.
It came on set point for the Huskers, so if it had been called out the match would have gone on to a fifth set. Obviously no one knows how that fifth set would have turned out, and the Huskers did still have a chance after that call to win the fourth set, but it was certainly a call that helped change the course of the match.
The bad blood between the coaches likely stems mostly from the 2005 national championship match when the Huskies swept the Huskers in San Antonio. Cook believes Washington used an illegal player — one who was a professional overseas — that season.
It all boiled over Saturday night.
“All I said, and you can quote me, is ‘The ball was out. Nice match,’ and then he (McLaughlin) started going off with language that would probably not be approved by the NCAA,” Cook told the Lincoln Journal-Star after the match.
In any event, there won’t be any Christmas cards exchanged between the Cook and McLaughlin families this year.
There probably won’t be any between the Cook family and anyone connected with the NCAA either. The committee that puts together the tournament pairings once again messed things up royally.
For starters, the committee sent top-seeded Florida to play at Texas. If you’re the top seed, you ought to head toward what appears to be the easiest regional, which would have been Dayton because the Flyers weren’t likely to make it to the regional.
The fact that Florida was swept by Purdue in a regional semifinal Friday — indicating that the Gators may have been a bit overrated — doesn’t factor into it at all. The Gators quite possibly wouldn’t have made the final four even in a different regional, but the top seed should be given more consideration.
Then you have the curious case of the Penn State Nittany Lions. It would appear the committee wanted the three-time defending national champions in Kansas City for the final four.
Now Penn State is an outstanding team and the Nittany Lions were hosting a regional, so that was already an advantage, and that’s fine. But then the committee put Northern Iowa in that regional as the fifth overall seed.
The Panthers lost in the first round of play, and Penn State’s road to the final four was wide open.
Then we get to the Seattle Regional. That’s where the second-seeded Huskers were sent. There really is no problem with the site, but the regional was ridiculously loaded.
The University of California — the co-champions of the Pac 10 Conference along with Stanford— were there as the seventh overall seed. The Bears were rated second overall by the AVCA coaches ratings, but the committee apparently didn’t know how good they were.
And the Huskies were rated 11th by the AVCA but were unseeded by the committee. With eight losses, maybe that’s more understandable than Cal falling to the seventh seed.
All in all, seven of the top 16 rated teams were in the Seattle Regional. Try and figure that one out.
The strangest thing about it all is that the NCAA should have wanted Nebraska in the final four in Kansas City. Reports indicate that ticket sales aren’t exactly on fire, and a bunch of Husker fans would have infused the final four with a lot of excitement and would have helped fill up the Sprint Center.
So once again — just like last year when the top three teams in the Big 12 (Texas, Iowa State and Nebraska) were put in the same regional — we saw that the committee does some strange things.
Bob Hamar is sports editor for The Independent.
