UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – The 2019 EIVA Tournament bracket is set with Princeton claiming the top seed for the first time in program history. The Tigers will host the tournament as the top seed and take on No. 4 St. Francis at 8 p.m. Thursday following the other semifinal between No. 2 George Mason and No. 3 Penn State.
The EIVA Tournament champion receives one of five automatic bids to the NCAA Tournament. Since Mark Pavlik took over the head coaching position at Penn State in 1995, Penn State has won 22 of the past 25 EIVA championships. Princeton captured the title in 1998, followed by 17 consecutive Penn State titles until George Mason finally snapped the Nittany Lions' streak in 2016. Penn State bounced back the following season but then lost to the eventual champion Harvard in the semifinals in 2018.
The EIVA has seen a vast change in competition level over the past few seasons, transforming from Penn State's league to lose every year to a point now where the league has become very evenly-matched across the board.
Princeton is the favorite to win the tournament this season, but if the regular season showed anything, it's that all four teams are capable of winning. St. Francis beat Princeton and George Mason once in the regular season, but Penn State won both of its matches against St. Francis and lost both of its matches to George Mason and Princeton.
One of the sources of the league's increased parity has been the presence of full-time coaches on every team. Up until this year, the EIVA has never had all of its teams using full-time coaches, which has led to greater success in recruiting for schools across the board.
"More resources are being allocated to men's volleyball – resources in paying and hiring full-time coaches," Pavlik said. "You have the resources allocated to the recruiting part of it and now you're seeing coaches at Junior Olympics; you see them at East Coast Championships; you see them at the High-Performance championships. They're making a concerted effort to get out there and identify players and student-athletes who are going to thrive in their system."
Another important factor has been increased resources allocated toward travel, allowing for each team to schedule more difficult nonconference schedules.
Penn State, for example, played 10 ranked teams during its nonconference slate, including four top 10 teams in California: No. 2 Long Beach State, No. 3 UC Santa Barbara, No. 5 USC and No. 6 UCLA.
"When you start getting this all together and then you couple that with the number of good, young athletes who are playing and developing at the grassroots level and the relatively small amount of varsity teams out there, good players are going to every school and I think over the last four or five years, the EIVA has really started to pick that up," Pavlik said.
Penn State may have its biggest challenge yet against George Mason in trying to collect its ninth consecutive postseason win against the Patriots. It has an 8-0 record in the rally scoring era against George Mason in postseason play, but the Patriots came out on top in both meetings during the regular season.
The rest of the EIVA has climbed to Penn State's level over the last few years. Now it's up to Pavlik and the Nittany Lions to counter as they fight to extend their season past Thursday.