Ramblermania.net

2nd seed Loyola will play at top seed Ohio State this Saturday night at 6 p.m. Central time for the automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. The losing team is unlikely to earn an at-large bid.

Loyola has defeated Lindenwood and Ball State in its first two playoff matches. After Ball State won the first set last night, Loyola came roaring back to dominate the second and third sets before winning a tight fourth set that had thirteen ties.

Ohio State defeated Lewis in five sets. Ohio State ran on them in the first 25-9 and won the second before Lewis came back to win the next two. Lewis gave us some hope that maybe we'll have the Final at Gentile but Ohio State clamped down in the 5th and won 3-2.

Loyola has reached the MIVA Final for the 11th time and 4th in the last six seasons. They are 3-7 all time including one loss vacated by Lewis from 2003. Loyola has won its last three appearances. Of those three wins, two were on the road at Lewis. Loyola is 0-3 all time vs. Ohio State in the Final with two losses at Ohio State and one neutral site loss at Quincy. Seniors Ricky Gevis, Jeff Jendryk, and Jake Selsky were starters on the last MIVA winning team in 2015. Senior Ryan Jamison has had a nice year after riding the bench for his first three seasons. He had a big time match defensively last night with 17 digs.

And a shout out to Paul Narup for a well timed kill. Hulse and Zolg were discussing the last play with the referees. Paul went over to the sideline for a quick drink of water. Loyola was assesed a yellow card for that. I think Paul said something to the up ref and that got him a yellow card. Two yellows, wow. On the very next point, Paul gets a kill.

I was really hoping for Lewis to pull off the upset last night for a few reason: It's going to be tough to win in Columbus, we've played Lewis really well this year, and for nothing else access to watching the game. If we were home, the game would be on either TV or ESPN3. Ohio State is putting the game on Big Ten Network Plus, which requires you to pay to watch, so I'll have to follow the live stats.

That Lindenwood loss a couple weeks ago is really killing us! If we'd won that, this game would be home, and we might have a shot at an at large. I guess we'll just have to get into the tournament the hard way.

A tip to the cap to Ohio State. While not as dominant as the last two years, they're still really strong and they showed it with the 3-0 win over Loyola. Loyola kept themselves in the match but the Ohio State service game was just too much at times and just two or three errant passes per set is what made the difference.

Thanks to Loyola Athletics for the free scarf.