Rick Nold doesn’t think he’s even mentioned to his players how the volleyball postseason tournament host will be determined.

Nold, who led Jacksonville State to a tournament championship as a No. 3 seed last season at Lantz Arena, said it isn’t that big of a factor in midseason preparation.

“I don’t think it changes it much,” he said. “We’re trying to prepare to be playing our best at the end of the season.”

The Ohio Valley Conference returned to its normal procedure of determining the postseason tournament host this season after one season of determining a host weeks before the regular season ended to accommodate ESPN-U.

This season, the team that wins the regular season title will host the tournament.

The conference had gone with the other method because ESPN wanted at least two weeks to prepare and know where to send their camera crews.

“ESPN needed to have a certain deadline,” said OVC Commissioner Jon Steinbrecher. “That was something we agreed to (before the season). This year we didn’t have to make a date before the end of the season.”

Under the agreement with ESPN, the OVC can choose two wild card games that they want to air and last season they chose to put the title games on in order to give volleyball and women’s soccer more exposure.

So in order to make it easier for ESPN to get its crews together, a committee was put together and decided the team that led the conference on Oct. 9 for women’s soccer and Oct. 23 for volleyball would host the postseason tournament.

At both deadlines, the Panthers were leading the conference.

A late-season skid dropped volleyball to No. 4 while the soccer team fell to a No. 2 seed with a tie in the season finale.

“To host is always nice,” said Tim Nowak, Eastern women’s soccer head coach. “Players aren’t missing classes and players are sleeping in their own beds.”

While not all coaches were in agreement as to whether it was a good thing that a No. 1 seed did not host a tournament, Nold said it was a sacrifice worth making.

“We didn’t mind deciding early because it was important for us to be on TV,” he said.

Nold said just because Eastern Illinois hosted the tournament, it wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

“Hosting can be a good or bad thing,” he said. “There’s a lot of work that goes into it.”

The OVC decided to use the two wild card games on women’s basketball this season.

The Web site the OVC launched in the summer with streaming video of games and matches, ovcsports.tv, gives the conference more notoriety. It does that despite not having the tournament championship games on ESPN-U, Steinbrecher said.

“We do think it gives us a leg up exposure-wise,” he said. “It should prove to be an excellent recruiting tool.”

Nowak said having the tournament at home was a plus, but that it still didn’t make that big of a difference.

“It was nice to host, but you have to play the other team,” he said. “They don’t give you an extra goal at kickoff just for hosting.”

Jay Grabiec/Daily Eastern News Junior outside hitter Eilza Zwettler atempts a spike against Samford on Friday evening at Lantz arena.

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