No. 8 Men’s Volleyball qualifies for upcoming NCAA Division III National Tournament

(Indianapolis, Indiana) The National Collegiate Athletic Association has announced the 2014 Division III Men's Volleyball National Championship Bracket earlier this morning during their selection show on NCAA.com.

The Rivier University Men's Volleyball team (29-7 overall, 15-1 in the Great Northeast Athletic Conference), ranked 8th in the April 8 America Volleyball Coaches Association Division III Top-15 Coaches Poll, received an automatic berth as they captured their seventh consecutive GNAC Championship on Saturday afternoon.

The Raiders received the fourth seed and will take on the fifth seed Carthage College on Friday, April 25 at 3pm in the Quarterfinals. Carthage College is currently #4 in the AVCA Top-15 Coaches Poll.

The 2014 NCAA Division III Men's Volleyball National Championship is being held at the Kennedy Sports Center on the campus of Juniata College in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania.

The tournament gets underway with a pair of play-in matches on Saturday, April 19. Ninth-seeded Endicott College (18-12) plays host to eighth-seeded and No. 5 the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (24-6), while 10th-seeded and No. 15 Baruch College entertains seventh-seeded and No. 6 the Stevens Institute of Technology (22-7) in the other play-in match.

The MIT-Endicott winner advances to play top-seeded and No. 1 Springfield College (24-7) in an April 25 quarterfinal match at 12:30 p.m., (all times EDT) on the same side of the bracket as the Rivier-Carthage contest. On the other side of the bracket, second-seeded and No. 2 the State University of New York-New Paltz takes on the Stevens Institute of Technology-Baruch winner in a quarterfinal match at 5:30 p.m., with third-seeded and No. 3 Juniata (27-4) playing sixth-seeded and No. 12 Kean University (26-7) in the final quarterfinal contest at 8 p.m.

The tournament continues with the semifinals on Saturday, April 26 and the championship match on Sunday, April 27 at 2 p.m. Rivier has qualified for the NCAA Division III Men's Volleyball Champions each of the past two seasons. In the inaugural Championship Tournament in 2012, the Raiders exited early after dropping a tough five set match against UC-Santa Cruz. In 2013, Rivier advanced to the National Semifinals before bowing out against tournament host Nazareth College, who was nationally ranked at #2.