KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- The SBU Bearcat volleyball team has been ranked 10th of 11 teams in the pre-season MIAA coaches poll.

SBU was 2-11 in conference play during the 2007 season, and finished with an 8-24 overall record.

SBU's head coach, Kelly Richardson, sees the pre-season ranking as two messages in one.

"We are happy to have taken a step up from last year's poll, but we're using the ranking as motivation when we begin conference play. We certainly do not plan to finish 10th in our league."

After using divisional play with the conference champion determined by a postseason tournament for the past two seasons, the MIAA will revert to a double round-robin schedule of 20 matches in 2008 to determine its champion and the tournament has been eliminated.

Among other changes in the sport of volleyball by the NCAA Volleyball Rules Committee are the use of set instead of game (a match is now best 3-of-5 sets), the number of points needed to win sets one through four has been reduced from 30 to 25, and the number of substitutions per set has been cut from 15 to 12.

The Bearcats open their season in San Antonio on August 29 & 30, playing four games in the San Antonio Tournament (against Texas A&M - Kingsville, Trinity, Incarnate Word, Tarelton State).