Volleyball | 11/16/2008 11:13:55 PM
MONMOUTH, Ore. - The No. 20 nationally-ranked Western Oregon University volleyball team will face Cal Poly Pomona in the first round of the 2008 NCAA Division II Volleyball Championship, Thursday Nov. 20, in San Bernardino, Calif. at noon.
The NCAA West Region tournament will feature eight teams, in a single elimination format, playing one match per day, Thursday-Saturday, Nov. 20-22. The winner of the region will go to the finals Dec. 4-6, with the site still to be determined.
Western Oregon is the No. 6 seed in the West Region, while Cal Poly Pomona comes in a No. 3. The Wolves entered the final week of the regular season ranked fourth in the region, and despite two wins to improve to 22-2 on the year, they dropped two spots.
"The exciting part is about to start," said WOU head coach Brad Saindon. "If we are going to win the West Region we are going to have to play everyone anyway but I was very surprised that we dropped from No. 4 to No. 6 in the region after winning both our matches this last weekend. We have no control over our seed and we will just go out there and play as well as we can and see where we go from there."
The Wolves (22-2, 15-1 GNAC) earned the automatic bid from the Great Northwest Athletic Conference as they won the league by two matches. Western Oregon will be the only team representing the GNAC in the NCAA Division II tournament after Western Washington (21-3, 13-3 GNAC) was denied an at-large bid. The Vikings are the defending region champion and advanced all the way to the national championship match a year ago.
"We were very surprised by our seed," said senior outside hitter Stacey Bennett. "Everyone is very excited to get into the tournament and we will just have to look at the matches round to round."
All Western Oregon matches will be broadcast via live on www.wouwolves.com.
Western Oregon qualified for the 2007 NCAA tournament and lost in the first round to Cal State San Bernardino.
West Region Tournament Field
No. 1 San Bernardino (25-3) v. No. 8 BYU-Hawaii (16-8), 7:30 pm
No. 4 Sonoma State (23-6) v. No. 5 Chico State (21-10), 5 pm
No. 2 UC San Diego (21-6) v. No. 7 Cal State LA (20-7), Noon
No. 3 Cal Poly Pomona (18-7) v. No. 6 Western Oregon (22-2), 2:30 pm
