The weekend couldn’t have gone much better for the BYU men’s volleyball team.
After posting sweeps over Grand Canyon on Friday and Pepperdine on Saturday to win the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation tournament championship, the Cougars learned Sunday that they received the No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament next week.
Getting a top-two seed was important, because the top two seeds — Hawaii is the No. 1 seed — get byes into the semifinals.
BYU (19-3) will meet either Penn State, Belmont Abbey or Lewis in a semifinal match on Thursday, May 6, at 6 p.m. MDT at the Covelli Center in Columbus, Ohio.
No. 6 seed Penn State meets No. 7 seed Belmont Abbey on Monday, May 3, with the winner advancing to play No. 3 seed Lewis on May 4.
“To be able to pull off a championship in this venue (Smith Fieldhouse), with fans, it was awesome. And so I am ecstatic for the guys. I am proud of the boys.” — BYU men’s volleyball coach Shawn Olmstead
In the top half of the bracket, Big West conference tournament champion UC Santa Barbara got a No. 4 seed and will meet No. 5 seed Pepperdine on May 4. The winner of that match will face Hawaii, which was upset in the Big West semifinals by UC San Diego, on May 6 at 3 p.m. MDT.
All the matches will be played at the Covelli Center on the campus of Ohio State University.
The championship match is set for May 8 at 6 p.m. and will be televised by ESPNU.
Even after BYU dominated the MPSF tournament, beating Pepperdine for the fifth time this season in the final, there was concern among Cougar Nation that Lewis (20-2) would get the No. 2 seed because it had a better record.
But BYU played a more difficult schedule. Two of the Cougars’ three losses were to UCLA, snubbed by the committee in the favor of Pepperdine.
“To be able to pull off a championship in this venue (Smith Fieldhouse), with fans, it was awesome,” coach Shawn Olmstead said Saturday night after the Cougars won by scores of 25-23, 25-15 and 25-19. “And so I am ecstatic for the guys. I am proud of the boys.”
BYU will be gunning for its fourth national championship in men’s volleyball. The Cougars last won the title in 2004; they played for the championship in 2016 and 2017, losing to Ohio State in the finals both years, the latter in Columbus at a different venue than will be utilized next week.