28 straight wins not enough for Colorado State volleyball to host NCAA tournament matches

Kevin Lytle | The Coloradoan

Twenty-eight straight victories wasn’t enough.

The Colorado State volleyball team is on a program-record winning streak and ranked No. 11 in the nation in the coaches’ poll.

The Rams won’t get to host NCAA tournament matches, though.

As expected, CSU wasn’t one of 16 seeded teams when the NCAA tournament bracket was announced Sunday night.

The Rams will play South Carolina in the first round at 6:30 p.m. Friday in Seattle in a pod hosted by No. 8 Washington.

“It would have been a great deal had we been able to host, but we didn’t. We were given an opponent that I feel was a winnable first-round match,” a diplomatic CSU coach Tom Hilbert said. “It’s out of our hands. I understand it.”

The Rams (29-1) played a mix of Power 5 programs and high-level mid-majors in their 12 nonconference games.

CSU played four matches against Pac 12 teams, going 3-1. The Rams beat the third- and seventh-place finishers in the Big 12 and the third-place team in the ACC. They faced conference champions from the Summit League (Denver) and Big Sky (Northern Colorado) and the second-place team (Cal Poly) in the Big West.

In total, five (Oklahoma, Florida State, UNC, Cal Poly, Denver) of their nonconference opponents made the NCAA tournament.

It didn’t matter, because of a weak Mountain West, which dragged the Rams down in the metric that matters — RPI.

CSU fell to the 20s in RPI late in MW play and entered the final week at No. 25. The Rams expected to not see their name as a host Sunday, but still there were boos from the big crowd at the watch party held at The Mayor of Old Town brewpub.

“I think we ... have done everything we could to (host),” three-time Mountain West Player of the Year Katie Oleksak said, even she came into Sunday expecting to head on the road.

South Carolina is 19-11 and finished sixth in the SEC. The other game in the group is Winthrop (24-4) and Washington (24-6). The Huskies finished second in the Pac 12.

The winners of the first-round games will play at 6 p.m. Saturday.

“We’ve played some of our most competitive matches on the road. They know how to step up in those situations,” Hilbert said.

Now is the chance to show that the little team from the MW can play a lot bigger.

“We have so many different emotions right now, but it’s like we need to prove ourselves,” Oleksak said.

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