The national championship puzzle is almost complete.

Top-ranked Cathedral Catholic (41-0) is one victory away from an undefeated season and with it being award vballrecruiter.com’s top honor for the high school season. Standing in the way is another undefeated team in St. Francis/Mountain View (34-0). The schools meet in Saturday’s California Open Division state championship match.

It’s a slam dunk, no-brainer case if Cathedral Catholic wins out. Much like Marymount CA did a season ago in going undefeated and winning national championships from multiple publications. However, a question we’ve been pondering is what happens is St. Francis pulls off the upset and it is the Lancers going undefeated?

Before exploring that in more depth, Cathedral Catholic dropped its first set of the season in beating Mira Costa, 25-20, 15-25, 25-14, 25-17, in Tuesday’s semifinal. It was a huge victory for the Dons considering it came without top player and Stanford signee Julia Blyashov sidelined because of a sprained ankle. We don’t know her availability for Saturday, but it certainly adds a storyline to the championship showdown if she’s unable to go.

That Cathedral Catholic beat Mira Costa without Blyashov was as much of a statement victory an undefeated, top-ranked team could make. Mira Costa is arguably the second-best team in California based on overall results this season. So for the Dons to handle the Mustangs like they did without Blyashov shows the depth Cathedral has.

As for St. Francis, the Lancers don’t have the strongest strength of schedule. They didn’t travel outside of California. They have beat nationally-ranked Archbishop Mitty five times, including in Tuesday’s state semifinals. If St. Francis were coming into this match with a loss on its record, we wouldn’t be having this discussion because there would be no argument for St. Francis. Yet, despite the strength of schedule issues, that could all possibly change Saturday evening with a victory over Cathedral Catholic.

While we obviously know what happens in terms of our national champion if Cathedral Catholic wins, it’s less clear what should be done if St. Francis triumphs. We addressed this a few weeks back. St. Francis has the pieces to pull off the upset. Setter Havannah Hoeft runs an effective offense and has junior outsides Taylor Williams and Erin Curtis at her disposal. Junior Whitney Wallace is the libero.

Going into this weekend’s CA state final, the way it looks from this perspective is only three schools have an argument to wind up No. 1 in our Top 50. Cathedral Catholic, St. Francis and Cornerstone Christian from Texas. Cornerstone is an interesting case because the standard for winning the national championship is the school must have won their respective state title.

The catch with Cornerstone is Cornerstone is an independent school and doesn’t play in the TAPPS (private schools) state playoffs.

A quick refresh on Cornerstone. The Warriors beat TAPPS 6A state champion Prestonwood Christian in the final of Volleypalooza in August. Cornerstone reached the final of the Nike TOC Southeast event, losing to Westminster Christian, and captured first place at the Nike TOC Southwest tournament. Cornerstone lost twice all season, to Westminster and to The Woodlands, a team Cornerstone beat. Cornerstone downed Mira Costa in the final of Nike TOC, and with Mira Costa being the only team to take a set off of Cathedral Catholic, it makes that victory look even more impressive now.

That leads to if Cathedral loses which school deserves to replace Cathedral at No. 1 – Cornerstone or St. Francis? St. Francis, of course, would have enormous bragging rights having defeated Cathedral Catholic, and being the only school to do so on a stage like the CA state final certainly seems worthy of being No. 1.

There doesn’t seem to be a stronger case from anyone else to climb ahead of any of these three schools. We mentioned Prestonwood winning TAPPS 6A and is currently ranked No. 4. But the loss to Cornerstone Christian would keep Prestonwood from ascending to No. 1.

We really loved the season Hamilton Southeastern put together in winning the Indiana 4A state title. HSE sits at No. 3. The Royals lost just once all season – to McCutcheon and then beat McCutcheon in the postseason. There’s a case there but the Royals didn’t travel outside the state and wouldn’t have a victory on its schedule like St. Francis would by beating Cathedral Catholic.

We also love the season engineered by Washburn Rural in winning the Kansas 6A state title. The Blues (45-1) lost just once this season, to 5A runner-up St. James Academy, while beating 6A champ Aquinas twice. It’s a mightily impressive season but not one that tops Cornerstone Christian’s in our opinion.

Of course, we’ve had weeks to breakdown all these possible scenarios and have a really good idea of who would be No. 1 in any of the scenarios mentioned above. However, there would be no fun in sharing those conclusions now. We’ll see how Saturday plays out and Monday we’ll release the final Top 50 featuring our 2022 national champion!