MILWAUKEE – The American Collegiate Athletic Association announced the attending colleges of their fall conference tournaments. Among the qualifiers is the Mount Mary University volleyball team (2-19). The ACAA Volleyball Conference Tournament will take place in Phoenixville, Penn. beginning Sat. Nov. 2. The match between MMU and Pratt will begin at 5:00 PM EST.

This is the first Mount Mary University athletic team to have been extended an invitation to play in any ACAA conference tourney; last season MMU teams were not eligible for conference tournaments via ACAA bylaws requiring schools to be members of the conference for one year before eligibility to conference tournaments.

The ACAA is a conference of eight full-member schools and one affiliate member that span across the entire continental United States of America. The Blue Angels joined the ACAA in 2018-19 in the sports of basketball, soccer, softball and volleyball.

Since the ACAA has no regular season conference schedule between schools, the conference uses the national MasseyRatings.com to decipher standings and team seeding in the conference tournament. The Blue Angels are in third place in the rankings as of this weekend, so the Blue Angels will open up the tournament against Pratt (15-5).

The multifaceted national ranking system has been used by conferences all over the nation to help seed and break ties in post season tournaments. The MasseyRatings.com's highly-calculated ranking system takes a number of factors into account including overall record, strength of opponents, points-for, points-against and power rankings.

The Blue Angels return to the court this week with a trio of games. MMU Volleyball will head to Manitowoc, Wis. for a pair of games Friday evening, then return to the Bloechl Center on Saturday to have a mid-day match against Faith Baptist Bible College. Live video and stats will be available for Saturday's contest with links at MtMaryAthletics.com.