UCI not in NCAA tourney

Though the televised NCAA Tournament pairings announcement was delayed roughly 25 minutes Sunday night, it ultimately signaled there would be no extension to the season for the UC Irvine women’s volleyball team.

The Anteaters (17-12), who won seven of their final eight matches to finish second in the Big West Conference, were denied an at-large berth into the 64-team field.

It’s the first time in the 24-season history of Big West women’s volleyball that at least two conference teams did not make the tournament.

Conference champion Long Beach State, which edged UCI in five games at home on Nov. 12 to ultimately win the crown, is the Big West’s lone postseason representative.

The denial also brought an official end to the coaching tenure of Charlie Brande, who announced in October that he would retire after his ninth season at the helm.

“I was fearful, because I knew we had a rough time in September,” Brande said. “We were so close. We lose by two in the fifth game at Long Beach. If we win that match, we get the automatic bid.”

UCI defeated Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in four games in a second-place showdown to conclude the regular season on Nov. 22.

Brande chose not to play any matches last week, when some teams are playing conference tournaments. UCI lost to Temple in a post-conference tournament last season, a loss Brande believes cost his team a berth in the 2007 NCAA Tournament.

“I don’t second-guess myself at all,” Brande said of his scheduling decision. “We played in the Long Beach tournament [in the final week] for eight years and I’d have to beg, borrow and plead to get a team to go out and go hard every year. [A final-week tournament is] just so anticlimactic.”

Brande said UCI, under a new coach, is a potential tournament team in ’09, though it loses senior starters Lauren Kellerman, Shannan Homan and Devon Sutherland.