Loyola Chicago and Ole Miss made first-round history Thursday as the NCAA Division I women’s volleyball tournament got underway.
Loyola, which got everyone’s attention when it upset Dayton in the Atlantic 10 tournament final, did not just upset BYU, the ffith-seeded team in the Louisville regional, but swept the Cougars of the Big 12 for the first NCAA victory in program history.
Ole Miss, an at-large from the SEC, came away with a five-set win over Florida State of the ACC, the No. 7 seed in the Penn State regional. It was also that program’s first NCAA victory.
Line of the day: Georgia Tech’s Tamara Otene had a career-high 33 kills in the Yellow Jackets’ five-set win over Tennessee, hitting .400 with an assist, 15 digs and a block.
The two rare first-round upsets set up a busy Friday with seven second-round matches — including Loyola vs. Purdue and Ole Miss vs. Creighton — and 14 more first-round matches.
The NIVC continued Thursday and we have those results, too, in this all-NCAA postseason edition of Volleyball Today:
Every NCAA match can only be seen on ESPN+. We recommend The Fifth Set whiparound show to keep up with all that’s going on because the NCAA and ESPN refuse to start early in the day to spread the matches out. Click here to link to the schedule, which adapts to the time zone you’re in.
The top four seeds get underway when Pittsburgh plays Morehead State, Nebraska plays Florida A&M, Penn State plays Delaware State and Louisville plays Chicago State.
The No. 2 seeds show Creighton vs. Ole Miss, Wisconsin vs. Georgia Tech, SMU vs. Missouri and Stanford vs. Sacramento State.
Illinois plays Northern Iowa, UTEP plays Oklahoma, NC State plays Florida, Yale plays North Carolina, South Dakota State plays Miami, Colorado State plays Texas A&M, USC plays Texas, Washington plays LMU, Colgate plays Kansas, Minnesota plays Kentucky, Dayton plays Baylor, Georgia Tech plays Wisconsin, New Hampshire plays Arizona State, TCU plays Oregon and Marquette plays Utah.
The NIVC schedule includes second-round matches between Omaha vs. DePaul, UConn vs. East Carolina, Utah Valley vs. Wyoming and Arkansas State vs. Stephen F. Austin. First-round matches include Weber State vs. Pacific, Northern Colorado vs. App State and Southeast Missouri State vs. Georgia Southern.
Loyola (22-11), won its 13th match in a row with its victory over BYU (19-10) at Purdue. The Ramblers, who have dropped just two sets during the run, overpowered BYU, which hit .164, 25-20, 25-21, 25-17. Read the Loyola recap here and the BYU recap here.
Ole Miss (18-11) pulled off a 20-25, 25-18, 23-25, 27-25, 15-13 upset of Florida State (21-10) at Creighton. This will be the first trip to the second round for Ole Miss after four previous tries. Payton Brgoch led the Rebels with 19 kills, hitting .500, to go with an assist and eight blocks.
Click here for the Ole Miss recap and here for the Florida State story.
Almost every other match was a sweep, but not the ACC’s Georgia Tech’s (21-9) wild five-set victory over Tennessee (15-12) of the SEC. Tamara Otene had a career-high 33 kills in the 25-18, 13-25, 32-30, 26-28, 15-12. She hit .400 and had an assist, 15 digs and a block. Teammate Bianca Bertolino had 25 kills, four assists an ace and 15 digs. Tennessee’s Nina Cajic had 27 kills, hit .338, and had two assists, two aces, 11 digs and six blocks, one solo …
Two other matches went four. Minnesota (21-1) of the Big Ten ousted Western Kentucky (28-7) of Conference USA at Kentucky, snapping the Toppers’ 24-match winning streak … Dayton (30-2) of the Atlantic 10, which should have had a top-16 seed, beat the SEC’s South Carolina (16-12) in four at Baylor as Lexie Almodovar had 22 kills, four aces, 13 digs and a block. South Carolina’s Riley Whitesides had 22 kills, an ace, eight digs and a block …
The sweeps winners: USC over UT Arlington, Missouri over Texas State, Purdue over Western Michigan, Marquette over FGCU, TCU over Hawai’i, Texas over Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, Kentucky over Cleveland State, Creighton over South Dakota, SMU over Wichita State, Wisconsin over Fairfield, Baylor over Wofford, Utah over College of Charleston and Oregon over High Point.
Performances of note: Purdue’s Eva Hudson had 21 kills with one error in 44 swings to hit .455 to go with seven digs and five blocks; TCU’s Melanie Parra had 24 kills, hit .302, and had an ace, seven digs and four blocks, one solo; Madi Skinner of Texas had 15 kills, hit .444, and had 11 digs and three blocks, one solo; Kentucky’s Brooklyn DeLeye had 15 kills, hit .481, and had an assist, three aces, five digs and a block; Wisconsin’s Anna Smrek had 14 kills with one error in 19 attacks and five blocks; Oregon’s Ony Ofoegbu had 12 kills with no errors in 16 attacks to hit .750 and had three digs.
In a second-round match, Bowling Green of the MAC defeated Wright State of the Horizon League 25-18, 13-25, 25-23, 25-17 as Lauryn Hovey had 16 kills, hit .333, and had an assist, a block and seven digs. Mia Tyler had 14 kills, hit .400 and had a dig and four blocks, one solo …
Utah Valley swept Washington State as Avery Shewell had 12 kills with one error in 19 attacks to hit .519 to go with two aces … Wyoming, which showed it can win if it doesn’t forfeit, beat Idaho State in four … Arkansas State beat UTRGV in four as Kaitlin Whitlock had 10 kills, 18 digs and two blocks, one solo … SFA swept Jackson State … Omaha beat Lindenwood in five behind 19 kills by Kali Jurgenmeister, who hit .357 and had five blocks and a dig … Jill Pressly had 21 kills as DePaul swept Toledo, hitting .318 with an assist, all four of her team’s aces, two blocks and five digs … UConn swept Mercer … East Carolina beat Winthrop in four as four players had 11 kills each, including Carlia Northcross, who had no errors in 17 swings, an ace, two digs and six blocks, one solo.
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