Michigan women's volleyball team embraces NCAA Tournament home-court advantage

“I think it’s real exciting to host because 2 weeks ago we thought it would be the last time playing in this gym again,” said senior middle hitter Veronica Rood after practice on Thursday. “It’s nice to get another chance to play in there; I think that’s exciting for us to have a home crowd.”

Michigan was 13-4 at home (13-3 at Cliff Keen, 0-1 at Crisler Arena) during the regular season.

“I think it’s an advantage, but it definitely doesn’t win us the weekend,” said senior right side hitter Megan Bower. “We have three really good teams coming in, and it’s nice to have our home crowd and our families, and to play at Cliff Keen and everything like that, but I just think most importantly we feel most comfortable here.”

Michigan coach Mark Rosen even viewed the distractions that accompany hosting as positives.

“I think there are more distractions because we have things to do to promote it, but they’re not a problem, they’re kind of fun because people are excited about what’s going on around our gym,” Rosen said.

There are other home-court advantages.

“Just technically, schedule wise, we have more practice by just staying home,” Rosen said. “Everybody else is on a bus driving here yesterday; we were practicing, in our normal routine. So I think there’s a huge advantage in just keeping our routine, not having to get some place.”

Michigan will face Niagara tonight at 7:30 p.m. in the first round nightcap, after Mid American Conference champion Ohio (26-6) takes on Notre Dame (21-6) at 5:30.

Niagara (23-8) and Michigan ended the season on opposite ends of the spectrum with the Wolverines suffering back-to-back 3-0 losses on Thanksgiving weekend at Penn State and Ohio State, respectively. Niagara, meanwhile, hasn’t seen action since earning an automatic tournament berth by winning the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference Tournament on Nov. 23.

“I wouldn’t say we’re backing into the tournament. We’re seeded. We’re one of the top seeds in the tournament. We didn’t back in. We’ve known we’ve been in the tournament for quite a while,” Rosen said. “We don’t spend a lot of time thinking about what happened last week or what happened yesterday, it doesn’t do us any good.

“All we’re focused on is the next match. I don’t think it’s any different this week coming off of the Ohio State match, just like last week we weren’t focused on what happened with Minnesota or with Michigan State the week before, when it went well.”

Niagara capped off the nation’s largest turnaround—winning 17 more games than last season— by earning its first tournament berth is school history, but Rosen isn’t interested in Cinderella stories.

“Honestly, we don’t focus on them very much. We gotta focus on the things we can control. I don’t know about their record or their hot streak. That doesn’t really pertain to us,” Rosen said. “All we’re focused on is us. Trying to make sure we play our best volleyball. Make sure we’re ready to execute our game plan and what we want to do.”

Michigan also reached a milestone with its tournament berth as Bower and Rood along with outside hitter side hitter Cassie Petoskey became the first senior class in program history to qualify for the NCAA Tournament in 4 consecutive seasons (senior Juliana Paz, a junior college transfer, has been with the team for 2 years.)

“I think that we’ve set a bar so that making into the tournament isn’t good enough anymore,” Rood said. “We’ve gone to the sweet 16 the past 2 years, so as a program we’re building and we’re setting higher and higher expectations on ourselves and I think the underclassmen are really starting to get that.”

Pete Cunningham covers sports for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached by e-mail at petercunningham@annarbor.com, or by phone at 734-623-2561. Follow him on Twitter @petcunningham.