Armed with a five-gun arsenal, Oregon is mustered for a frontal assault on the stronghold it will engage next year in the Big Ten.
The NCAA women’s volleyball tournament round of 16 on Thursday sees the balanced and battle-tested Ducks (28-5) square off with Purdue (23-8) in Madison, Wisconsin. A victory would send Oregon into regional-final showdown against host Wisconsin (28-3) or Penn State (23-8).
Ducks coach Matt Ulmer will make a Badger State homecoming as his troops from the disbanding Pac-12 get a first-hand look at the Big Ten minefield they will have to negotiate in their new league.
“If Nebraska were invited to this weekend, we could call it the 2024 Big Ten championship tournament,” said Ulmer, a Wisconsin native with deep roots at Carthage College in Kenosha, roughly a two-hour drive southwest Madison. “It’s crazy that this is a preview of what our future will look like in our new league.
“But this level of competition is nothing new for us. The Pac-12 was really loaded. We typically schedule a lot of Big Ten teams in the non-conference. It seems like in the playoffs every year, we’re matched up with somebody from the Big Ten. The players who decide they want to come to Oregon have aspirations of playing at the highest level, so for them to switch conferences (in 2024), that’s not going up or down, it’s exactly what they’re trying to do.”
As befitting their statuses as the best volleyball conferences in the country, with 30 NCAA titles between them, the Big Ten and Pac-12 own half of the 16 teams left standing after the tournament’s first two rounds. Both leagues went 9-1.
The NCAA selection committee opted to award more bids to two other conferences. The Southeastern had eight bids, going 8-5 with three of its teams advancing. The Big 12 got seven, but after a 7-6 record, only defending NCAA champion Texas remained in contention. The Atlantic Coast also received five invitations, went 7-2 and has three in the hunt.
That the Pac-12’s Oregon, Stanford, Washington State and Arizona State all won their first two matches was not lost on Ulmer.
“Getting five bids did not accurately reflect how good the Pac-12 was,” he noted.”Our conference was so deep this year that there was no bottom. Those teams that finished at the bottom, they beat a lot of the mid teams, and that knocked those teams out of the tournament. We were the No. 1 ranked conference in nonconference play with the No. 1 strength of schedule, yet somehow we only got five teams into the NCAAs. Everybody was so good that there never was an off night.”
Negotiating the treacherous terrain of the Pac-12 with a 16-4 record (second-best behind Stanford’s 19-1) and a non-conference slate that included victories over five teams that earned NCAA bids (Pittsburgh, Hawaii, Pepperdine, Marquette and James Madison) helped Oregon enter the NCAAs with an RPI computer ranking of 8, the No. 6 spot in the final VolleyballMag.com Super 16 Media Poll and a No. 6 seed overall in the NCAA Tournament.
The Ducks took no red-flag losses and the road victory over ACC-champion Pittsburgh (one of four No. 1-seeded regional hosts) was a significant bullet point on their resume.
Oregon’s four defeats in the Pac-12 all came against teams that advanced to the round of 16: Stanford (twice, losing in five sets on the road), Washington State and Arizona State. Its lone non-conference loss came against the Big Ten’s Minnesota, which won its first-round match.
The key to that success has been tremendously diverse attack, as reflected by the Ducks’ landing five players on the 18-member All-Pac-12 team: outside hitter Mimi Colyer (a 6-foot-3 sophomore), OH Gabby Gonzales (a 6-3 senior), right side Morgan Lewis (a 6-3 senior), middle blocker Kara McGhee (a 6-5 senior transfer from Baylor) and setter Hannah Pukis (a 5-11 redshirt senior). Colyer was the 2022 VBM national freshman of the year.
Oregon possesses so much firepower and size that it lurks as a legitimate threat to win any match on any night, including the national championship. When I broached that assessment to Ulmer, this was his response:
“I agree with you,” he said. “We have five legitimate scorers. Four of our hitters had 18 kills or more in a match, and the fifth, one of our middles (6-foot-4 redshirt senior Karson Bacon) had 11 kills on 12 swings with no errors just the other night. What makes us so dangerous is that if you try to take away one or two of them, then the others are open and they’re going to go off. If teams try to key on one or two hitters, we have an answer for that.”
Spreading the butter among the myriad of hitting options is Pukis, a VBM third-team All-American in 2022 and a four-time All-Pac-12 selection.
“I know I’m biased, but I believe we have the best setter in the country in Hannah,” Ulmer said. ”She makes so many great decisions, is so athletic, so consistent, that she is everything you would want in a setter. So as long as we control the ball OK, we’re pretty tough.”
Gonzales, who joined the Ducks from Ohio State, helped fill the huge void left by the graduation of All-American Brooke Nuneviller. A key member of a Buckeyes squad that advanced to the regional final last season, Gonzales has been the “glue” for her new team, according to her grateful coach.
“Brooke did so many things for us, one of the best all-around players college volleyball’s ever had,” Ulmer said. “She was so impactful in so many areas, how do you replace that? We knew it would have to be by committee, that everybody would have to get a little bit better. I thought Gabby would be the right fit for us. She’s come in and been one of the best passers in the country. She takes care of a lot of the junk for us and makes a lot of really smart plays, with a great volleyball IQ. You have to have a ‘glue player’ and she’s been it.
“Between Pukis, Gabby and our senior libero, Georgia Murphy, they run the thing. When they’re all clicking together, then it allows our middles, Lewis on the right side and Colyer on the left to make big plays. With three court generals, the big boppers and big blockers can thrive. You can’t have a whole team of just ball-control players. You need the physicality, too, and we have that really good balance.”
That effectiveness has extended to a stellar defense and a work ethic reflective of experienced players.
“Our defense just set an Oregon record for opposing hitting percentage,” Ulmer noted. “We’ve held teams to about a buck-fifty. We’re doing it a lot of different ways.
“Overall, we’re a lot like a pro team. We’re very old. One underclassman, and everybody else is a fifth- or sixth-year senior. It’s a bunch of student-athletes who are ready to go play pro and they’re already acting that way. They are extremely consistent in their approach every day. From a coaching perspective, it’s really enjoyable, just helping them get ready for what’s next in their lives. They have big goals and have been working hard to get there.”
Oregon never has gotten to the mountaintop in 20 NCAA Tournament appearances, the closest to it coming when it lost to Texas in the 2012 title match under coach Jim Moore, whom Ulmer succeeded in 2017. On Ulmer’s watch, they have landed an NCAA bid in six of seven seasons, twice advancing to the quarterfinals. In 2022, Oregon knocked off Nebraska in the round of 16 before dropping a five-setter to Louisville in the regional final.
After a regular season that saw the program set records for average attendance and a single-match crowd (7,400), the Ducks have had smooth paddling in the 2023 NCAA Tournament, with home-court sweeps against mid-majors Southeastern Louisiana out of the Southland Conference and the Big West’s Hawaii.
The going figures to get a lot tougher against Purdue on Thursday (9:30 p.m. Eastern, ESPNU). Coached by the veteran Dave Shondell, the Boilermakers have an RPI of 12 and also were No. 12 in the final VBM poll. Potent pin hitters Eva Hudson, a 6-foot-1 sophomore, and Chloe Chicoine, a 5-11 freshman, present separate and distinct challenges. Hudson is an uber-physical hammer and the high-jumping Chicoine is a will o’ the wisp with a nasty top-spin jump serve. Both were named first-team All-Big Ten.
Ulmer marveled not only at their talent, but their youth, noting, “Poor Dave only gets them together for three years.”
“Hudson and Chicoine, what a great 1-2 combo, as good as any two on the pins in the country,” Ulmer gushed. “It’s so tough to defend them because both score out of the back row so well. That’s the kicker, if you try to take one of them out of it for one way, they’re going to get you in the other. Most teams don’t have two left sides who can score as well out of the back row as they do from the front.”
“Purdue looks really confident. Their freshman setter (Taylor Anderson) as the season has gone on has gotten more and more comfortable. Their libero (Maddie Schermerhorn) is elite at her position. Ravin Colvin in the middle can go off at any time. At this point, everybody is really good and your kids have to be up for the challenge.”
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