The 11th-ranked Grand Canyon Lopes quite likely accomplished enough during the stacked MPSF Championship to cement a berth in the NCAA tournament. (Photo courtesy of GCU athletics)
All of the conference tournaments that might have thrown monkey wrenches into the selection process for the NCAA beach-volleyball championships concluded with the “right” automatic qualifiers.
After the results from Friday, the landscape looked like this:
Loyola Marymount (29-10) — ranked seventh in the AVCA coaches poll, eighth by the TruVolley computer and the 2025 national runner-up — won the West Coast Conference tourney for the seventh year in a row. That eliminated by biggest possible monkey wrench.
Stetson (27-9, 14th AVCA, 16 TruVolley) eliminated the need for the selection committee to consider whether the Atlantic Sun warranted an at-large bid by sweeping through the ASUN competition, handling North Florida (21-14, 17th AVCA, 19 TV) 3-0 in the title dual.
Cal Poly (30-8, sixth AVCA, 3 TV) bested Long Beach State (25-11, 10th AVCA, 10 TV) 3-0 in the Big West final and bounced Hawaii (19-14, 16th AVCA, 14 TV) 3-0 in the semifinals, almost certainly ending the Rainbow Wahine’s razor-slim shot at a spot in the 16-team NCAA tournament field.
The Southland was a one-bid regardless and will send tourney champion Texas A&M-Corpus Christi (23-9, unranked AVCA, 26 TV) to the NCAAs for the fourth time.
In what really shouldn’t have come as a surprise, coach Stein Metzger’s Texas Longhorns (26-6, third AVCA, 4 TV) emerged with the automatic bid out of the absolutely loaded Mountain Pacific Sports Federation tournament. Much more on the fallout from the MPSF will come below.
The winner of six-team Big 12 tournament didn’t qualify for automatic entry into the NCAAs. Florida State (33-2, fourth AVCA, 5 TV) defeated defending national champion TCU (20-10, ninth AVCA, 7 TV) 3-0 in the final.
None of the three league tournaments that weren’t settled on Friday — Conference USA, Sun Belt and Ohio Valley — are in the picture for at-large spots.
All Volleyball! is highly confident, therefore, in projecting that the eight at-large entries awarded by the selection committee on Sunday will go to UCLA (30-6, first AVCA, 1 TruVolley), Stanford (36-4. second AVCA, 2 TV), USC (28-11, fifth AVCA, 6 TV), California (23-13, eighth AVCA, 9 TV) and Grand Canyon (19-15, 11th AVCA, 12 TV) out of the MPSF, FSU and TCU from the Big 12 and Long Beach State of the Big West.
The season-long resumes amassed while playing meatgrinder schedules make UCLA, Stanford (which held the No. 1 spot in the AVCA poll for four weeks), USC and Cal glaringly easy choices. Grand Canyon played its way into the NCAA championships, which will be contested May 1-3 in Gulf Shores, Alabama.
With losses only to TCU and Loyola Marymount, Florida State was a shoo-in. TCU holds victories over FSU, Loyola Marymount and Arizona State (twice), while incurring no “bad” losses. Long Beach State played a killer schedule against all the West Coast powers and beat Grand Canyon, LSU, Arizona State, Hawaii, Stetson, North Florida (twice) and Washington (twice) — more than enough to secure its spot.
Grand Canyon posted a key victory over Louisiana State during Day 2 of the MPSF competition at Spiker Beach in Huntington Beach, California. (Graphic courtesy of GCU)
Coach Abra Rummel’s Grand Canyon crew went 0-4 in the MPSF Midseason Rumble, but built momentum as the season progressed. Almost certainly the Lopes’ 3-1 victory over fellow bubble team Louisiana State (22-16, 13th AVCA, 13 TV) during the MPSF tournament will provide the catalyst to put them over the hump with the selection committee.
Grand Canyon also handled LSU 3-2 during the Tigers’ Death Volley Invitational. The other likely bubble-sitter, Arizona State (18-15, 12th AVCA, 11 TV) went 1-2 in the Big 12 tourney and was eliminated in the first knockout round 3-2 by Boise State (20-16, 18th AVCA, 17 TV). The Sun Devils lost seven of their last 11 duals.
“Honestly, a couple weeks ago, I felt like our season was going to come down to the last weekend and, of course, it’s going to come up against LSU,” Rummel commented after her squad took down the Tigers on Thursday. “They’re a great program and for the past seven years that I’ve been at GCU we’ve battled them every time, and this was a really great fight again.”
The Lopes’ match victories came on the lower courts, with their 4s pair of senior Jessica Drake and junior Isabelle Tucker notching the clinching point 21-14, 21-17 over Zayna Meyer and Bella Lagemann.
Meanwhile, Texas reaffirmed its status on a short list of legitimate national-title contenders by going 4-0 in the double-elimination (until the semifinals) MPSF tourney. The Longhorns corralled Grand Canyon 3-0, UCLA 3-1, USC 3-2 and, in the final, UCLA again 3-2. Their automatic bid wasn’t secured until grad athlete Karin Zolnercikova and redshirt junior Macey Butler rallied to top the Bruins’ Kenzie Brower and Mallory LaBreche 16-21, 21-18, 15-9 at the 5s. UCLA had eliminated Stanford 3-1 in the semifinals.
MPSF tournament champion Texas received yeoman’s work from 5s pair Karin Zolnercikova and Macey Butler, who went 4-0 over the three-day event and scored the dual-clinching point in the final against UCLA. (Photo courtesy of Texas athletics)
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