It’s tourney time!
Conference championships begin Thursday in the ASUN, CAA, MAAC, SoCon, Sun Belt and WAC. All of those are one-and-done leagues, meaning only the conference-tournament winner will get a bid to the 64-team NCAA Tournament bracket.
There was big-time regular-season drama Wednesday as No. 6 Wisconsin had to go to overtime to hold off visiting No. 17 Minnesota and No. 22 TCU pulled off a reverse sweep over visiting Houston.
Southeast Missouri State won the Ohio Valley Conference regular-season title and Northern Iowa did the same in the Missouri Valley Conference.
The line of the day: Florida’s Kennedy Martin had 31 more kills as the sophomore right side hit .333 and had an ace, 10 digs and four blocks in a four-set SEC win at Auburn.
The coaching carousel spun again, picking up speed as three NCAA Division I teams are looking for coaches.
LOVB has to love this: League One Volleyball, which starts it first pro season in January, has $100 million in committed new funding.
And there’s more pro beach volleyball, this time in India.
It’s all in this edition of Volleyball Today:
First the regular-season matches of note.
There’s a big one in the Big Ten when No. 5 Penn State plays host to No. 10 Purdue. No. 14 Oregon goes to Michigan State, No. 21 USC is at Northwestern and Maryland is at Michigan.
In the Big 12, No. 8 Arizona State is home for Iowa State, No. 16 Utah is home for West Virginia, No. 24 BYU is home for Cincinnati and Arizona is at Colorado.
Northern Colorado, which holds a two-game lead over Sacramento State and Weber State in the Bg Sky, is home for Idaho. Sacramento State is home for Idaho State and Weber State goes to Portland State.
Cal Poly, UC Davis and idle Hawai’i are 12-4 atop the Big West. Cal Poly goes to UC Riverside and UC Davis is home for UC Santa Barbara.
In the Mountain West, where only the top six teams make the conference tournament, Colorado State holds a one-game lead in the loss column over idle Fresno State and a one-game lead over Utah State. CSU is home for Nevada and Utah State goes to Wyoming. Fourth-place San Jose State has already won its match at sixth-place Boise State, since Boise State is forfeiting. Fifth-place San Diego State is home for New Mexico.
Loyola Marymount, up by two games in the West Coast Conference over San Diego and Pepperdine, is at Pacific. San Diego is home for Gonzaga and Pepperdine goes to Saint Mary’s.
As mentioned, five conference championships begin Thursday. Click on any conference to go to their respective tournament websites: ASUN, CAA, MAAC, SoCon, Sun Belt, WAC.
Wisconsin rallied for a 25-21,12-25, 22-25, 25-20, 20-18 victory over Minnesota. Read the Wisconsin account here and the Minnesota account here. Also in the Big Ten, Nebraska hit .472 and swept Iowa, which scored a total of 42 points and hit .082 …
TCU, which was pretty close to sweeping, ultimately won its Big 12 match over visiting Houston 25-27, 24-26, 25-18, 25-14, 18-16. Melanie Parra had 24 kills, two assists, seven of her team’s 11 aces, 14 digs and two blocks. Jalyn Gibson had 24 digs to go with 15 kills, two assists, two aces and a block. Houston’s Kate Georgiades had 36 digs, four assists and an ace. Also in the Big 12, No. 17 Baylor swept visiting Texas Tech and UCF beat visiting Kansas State in five. Emily Wilson had 23 kills for UCF, while K-State got 25 from Aniya Clinton …
No. 12 Kentucky kept its one-game lead over Florida as the Wildcats swept visiting Mississippi State and No. 22 Florida won in four at Auburn. Martin, who had those 31 kills, had 32 in her last match, a win at Missouri. She had 31 two previous times this season. Eli McKissock had 31 digs and three assists. Auburn has lost nine in a row and 10 of 11 …
In the only ACC. match, Boston College won in five at Syracuse as Audrey Ross had 21 kills, an assist, eight digs and five blocks, and NCAA blocks leader Julia Hagerty had 11 blocks, two solo, to go with seven kills. Sydney Moore also had seven kills and 11 blocks for Syracuse …
Southeast Missouri swept to beat visiting SIUE for the second straight night and won the Ohio Valley Conference regular-season title and is the top seed in the league tournament. Abby Johnson and Lucy Arndt had 12 kills each for Southeast Missouri. Also in the OVC, second-place Lindenwood swept at Little Rock as three players had 11 kills each …
Northern Iowa completed back-to-back 18-0 Missouri Valley Conference seasons with a sweep of visiting second-place Drake.
Mary Tendler, who has been at Elon for 22 seasons, is retiring from coaching. The Phoenix finished 11-18 this season, 5-13 in the CAA, losing its last 10 matches.
From the Elon news release:
The 2021 CAA Coach of the Year and 2010 Southern Conference Coach of the Year, Tendler led Elon through the transition to the Southern Conference in her first season in 2003 and then oversaw the move to the CAA during the 2014 season.
Tendler had 10 seasons with at least a .500 record, including two 20-win campaigns. In 2021 the Phoenix advanced to its first appearance in the CAA Championship match. The 2024 team made a six-win improvement over the previous season, garnering three more conference victories.
Elon has never been to the NCAA Tournament.
Two sixth-year coaches are gone from programs that have not had winning records in a long time.
Louisiana Tech, which finished 8-23, 2-16 in Conference USA, has fired Amber McCray. She went 50-115 during her time in Ruston.
Louisiana Tech, which last had a winning season in 2003, has never been to the NCAA Tournament.
And Holy Cross fired Kathleen Colpoys, an alum who had an outstanding career at the school from 2007-2011. Her Crusaders finished 2-23 this season, 0-16 in the Patriot League. In her six years at the helm, Holy Cross went 21-124.
Holy Cross, which has not had a winning record since 1989, has never been to the NCAA Division I tournament.
As mentioned, League One Volleyball raised $100 million in committed new funding, led by Atwater Capital—a women-founded private equity firm known for its focus on media and entertainment and notable investments in companies like Plan B and 88rising—alongside existing investors, Ares Management funds (“Ares”) and Left Lane Capital.
“The initial idea behind LOVB was to introduce a youth to pro ecosystem approach from the onset, but what we’ve been able to achieve with LOVB is the opportunity to champion athletes throughout their entire volleyball journey,” said LOVB co-founder and CEO Katlyn Gao. “We believe this is the next wave of sport, starting from the grassroots up to build professional pathways. By connecting our club athletes to our pros, we are supporting the next generation of players and creating a bond unrivaled by other leagues. As the sport of volleyball continues to grow not just in size but in popularity, we are humbled to be rolling up our sleeves alongside leading investors like Atwater, Ares and Left Lane Capital to enable volleyball to become the next major league.”
LOVB, which earlier announced a partnership with women’s clothier SPANX, recently added REVOLVE, which will become the official online fashion retail partner for the company.
The Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour has a Challenge event in Chennai, India, and it started with a qualifier Thursday.
As this was compiled Americans Tim Brewster and Wyatt Harrison, Derek Bradford and Theo Brunner and Taylor Crabb had all won their first-round matches and another pair, Cody Caldwell and Evan Cory, joined them in the second round. Caldwell and Cory are coming off their Haikou Challenge victory last weekend in China.
On the women’s side in India, two USA pairs advanced.
Alaina Chacon and Molly Phillips won their first-round qualifier match but then lost to Americans Savvy Simo and Abby Van Winkle. Toni Rodriguez and Molly Shaw, the top seed in the qualifier, defeated a team from Norway.
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