68th All Japan Intercollegiate Women's Championship 2021 (Nov 29–Dec 5)

I'm surprised Kaetsu looks like they are going to win this, but they are playing well

I want to know who #22 on Fukuoka is

Doesn't surprise me Fukuoka came back from 14–20 to tie it at 22 in the 4th set

And ...

TIE BREAK

Brutal

This is March Madness. You lose, you go home. It's all over for you. The last match of your college career ended in failure

I jinxed Kaetsu. I'm sorry Kaetsu

I like the D Court coverage the best. It's the odd rear corner camera, but it's the most stable with the best zooms

C Court and A Court on the ends of the 3 court spread and are a close second. C court has replays but bad floor glare

B court is in the middle and the least fun

That N Court with the blue floor seems low-rent. They don't even have the score up yet for the first (Kokushikan) match. It must be out in Saitama or somewhere

NSSU, Aoyama Gakuin, and Fukuoka again will be on the good D Court tomorrow.

Tsukuba is on C Court tomorrow

fyi - Kanto girls are the prettiest

Round 1 Day 2 •• 2020.11.29

Just as I feared, and just as I jinxed: Kaetsu goes home Unfortunate first round draw for them, but that was the match of the night for sure

Today's matchups:

A Court:

NIFS vs JF Oberlin

Shigakkan vs Juntendo

Kyoto Tachibana vs Shoin

B Court:

Tokai vs Kokushikan

TWCPE vs Tezukayama

JWCPE vs Kyushu Kyoritsu

C Court:

Tenri vs Tsukuba

Shokei Gakuin vs Nihon

Aichi Gakuin vs Kobe Shinwa or Kumamoto Gakuen*

D Court:

Chukyo vs NSSU

Aoyama Gakuin vs Mukogawa Women

Keiai vs Fukuoka

G Court:

Nagasaki International vs Shiseikan

Seinan Jo Gakuin vs Ryukoku

K Court:

Daito Bunka vs Senri Kinran

Niigata Health & Welfare vs Waseda

A–G courts start at 10:00am. K court starts at 13:15pm

B court will shed some tears. Other than that it's pretty cut and dried or doesn't matter a lot

*UNIVAS has it as Aichi Gakuin vs Kobe Womens but I think they are wrong --- and misled by an early score report from JVA. I'm pretty sure they originally had Kobe Women beating Kumamoto. I was frazzled for a moment last night regarding JVA Scorebox but it was too late for me to investigate

*Everybody on the Internet has Kobe Shinwa as the winner except JVA. The videos are not up for VOD so I can't check but I thought Kobe Shinwa was winning when I looked in

Go Tsukuba ᕙ(⇀‸↼‶)ᕗ

1 Kurumi Takama (C) (Fan service) OH

2 Miku Yachi (tall) MB

5 Shuri Kurata Setter

10 Haruka Oyama (2nd year, looks very promising) MB

11 The Real Yoshino Sato (2nd year killing it. looks angry tonight) OH

16 Koto Monta (freshman looks tough) OP

15-L Haruka Nakamura

The level of volleyball has gone way up tonight now that the seeded teams are playing, but the scores are closer than I expected

Looks like the Tsukuba libero took a facial and it bounced off her face and found open court on the other side of the net

Such a bummer the four teams I want to see most are all playing at the same time right now -- Tsukuba, NSSU, NIFS, Tokai

I'm souring on Tokai, though. For some reason Ameze Miyabe rubs me the wrong way. She's very aloof, and looks scared when things dip a little. Me and scared don't get along

OMG Tsukuba loses a set. And to one of the bye teams to boot

They looked sloppy in set 2. Hitting into the net, getting blocked. That's nonsense

The three other top teams vanquished their opponents 3–0 easily. I'm going to look at it like this: I get to watch one more set of Tsukuba volleyball and it will be unbothered by other matches going on

Now that I know Tsukuba setter's dirty little secret (played OP freshman year) and I can see her face I'm liking her more and more. I thought Tsukuba might dip after Yokota then Mandai left. Tsukuba must have a good setter coach

The Real Yoshino Sato is getting dug a lot but she's hitting the ball really well with confidence. Has at least 2 aces as well

OMFG

Tie Break

Tsukuba is hitting everything right at the Tenri players, and there seems to be no force in their shots as the match moved on. I'm troubled. This does not bode well for Tsukuba even if they win. If they lose I will be unable to process it

Thank Henry Tsukuba played the Tie Break well. But it was not fun. It was nerve racking conservative wimpy Tsukuba volleyball in sets 2–4

Good on the Tenri girls. They're going home but they took two sets from Tsukuba on the way there, and they were naughty:

It should be illegal to broadcast a volleyball match without publishing roster lists somewhere. All those Tenri girls are going home and some may never play volleyball again. I want to give some of them immortality with a page on volleybox, especially the southpaw, but I have no way of knowing who they are

Kind of weird that JVA seems to be unreliable as a scorekeeper. They haven't changed/updated that Kobe Shinwa score from yesterday and here's one they got wrong tonight:

TWCPE is looking very good, crushed Tezukayama. Not surprising that TWCPE played well but they simply did not let Tezukayama into the game at all, and Tezukayama is a Top Ten team with a star OP Miumi Yoshida. Tezukayama play Toyota in the Empress Cup

I hope Tsukuba doesn't play TWCPE next

I watched the setter , Miyu Okabe , who just signed with V2 Chiba Angel Cross (the nurses team) playing for Juntendo. She looks okay. Juntendo shut out Shigakkan

Ryukoku shut out Seinan Jo Gakuin. Ryukoku plays SAGA in Empress Cup

Everything's been 3–0 so far tonight except for Tsukuba ... and Aoyama Gakuin, for reasons unknown, just gave a set to Mukogawa Women

Round 2 Day 3 •• 2020.12.01

Except for that silly tie-break Tsukuba got themselves into, the expert level TWCPE is executing at, and Aoyama Gakuin giving a set to Mukogawa, no real surprises (maybe Waseda losing the full set)

Sorry to see JWCPE and Nanami Shibayama go home, but they haven't been playing well. They were weak in the Kanto Autumn League as well

JVA's database must be hemorrhaging. They still haven't corrected the previous day's Kobe Shinwa victory, and didn't post results for their victory last night. I guess since they have them in the DB as losing previously they can't have them win the next day

They did correct the NIFS / JF Oberlin score

Glad to see Fukuoka moving on , sad to see Kokushikan going home

Today's Matchups
A Court:

10: 00 ~ NIFS vs Shoin

13: 15 ~ Nagasaki International vs Juntendo

C Court:

10:00 ~ Kobe Shinwa vs Tsukuba

13: 15 ~ Shokei Gakuin vs Niigata Health & Welfare

J Court:

10:00 ~ Tokai vs Kyushu Kyoritsu

13: 15 ~ Senri Kinran vs TWCPE

K Court:

10: 00 ~ Fukuoka vs NSSU

13: 15 ~ Aoyama Gakuin vs Ryukoku

It scares me that Tsukuba is matched up against Kobe Shinwa and whatever kind of weird hex is going on with them. It should be an easy win for Tsukuba but Kobe keeps winning despite being denied by the JVA

Everything else looks pretty cut and dried. The Fukuoka vs NSSU match should be the most fun. I don't think Fukuoka is good enough to beat NSSU, but NSSU could play bad enough to lose to Fukuoka

Fukuoka 30–28 NSSU Set 1