NCAA volleyball: Conference awards; notes, nuggets galore as tourney begins Thursday

The NCAA Divsion I women’s volleyball tournament begins Thursday with 16 matches, including all four of the regional No. 2 seeds — Kentucky, Oregon, Texas and Louisville — and No. 1 Wisconsin.

The other No. 1 seeds — Nebraska, Stanford and Pittsburgh – – open play Friday.

Since there are 32 first-round matches, Friday will be loaded, with not only the 16 first-round matches, but eight between the Thursday winners.

Every first-round match can be seen on ESPN+. The matches at Texas will also be shown — if you get it — on the Longhorn Network for the last time, because that entitiy goes away after this school year when Texas joins the SEC.

We”ll have a match-by-match first-round breakdown later Wednesday.

Conference award winners

The ACC, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC announced their respective top players and coaches for the year. The Big Ten unveils its award winners Thursday,

ACC: There are co-players of the year in Louisville senior outside and Florida State junior outside Audrey Koenig. The defensive player of the year is Louisville junior libero Elena Scott, the setter is Pittsburgh junior Rachel Fairbanks, and the top freshman is Pitt right side Olivia Babcock. The coach of the year is Florida State’s Chris Poole.

Click here for the complete ACC honors list.

BIG 12: The player of the year is Texas junior outside Madisen Skinner. The setter is Kansas junior Camryn Turner, the libero is Houston senior Kate Georgiades and the freshman is Iowa State outside/right side Nayeli Gonzales. The coach of the year is Ray Bechard of Kansas.

Click here for the complete Big 12 honors list.

PAC-12: Kendall Kipp, Stanford’s fifth-year right side, is the player of the year. The setter is Stanford junior Kami Miner, the libero Stanford senior Elena Oglivie and the freshman is Cal outside Maggie Lie. The coach of the year is JJ Van Niel of Arizona State. 

Click here for the complete Pac-12 honors list.

SEC: There were, incredibly, four coaches of the year, Jason Watson of Arkansas, Craig Skinner of Kentucky, Dawn Sullivan of Missouri and Eve Rackham Watt of Tennessee. Georgia senior middle Sophie Fisher is the player of the year, Missouri sophomore Maya Sands is the libero and Kentucky outside Brookyn DeLeye was the top freshman. 

Click here for the complete SEC list that, while honoring four coaches, does not include a setter of the year.

EHMAN’S B1G PICKS: Big Ten Network analyst Emily Ehman, she of Jonas Brothers fame who joins us for our NCAA Zooms, projects that Wisconsin’s Sarah Franklin is the POY, Nebraska libero Lexi Rodriguez is the defensive honoree, Nebraska’s Bergen Reilly is the top setter and freshman, and Nebraska’s John Cook is the coach of year. Follow her on Twitter @emilyehman

First-year coaches

The aforementioned Dawn Sullivan of Missouri and Arizona State’s JJ Van Niel are among of a handful of first-year coaches whose teams are in the 64-team NCAA field.

Earlier this week we featured Fairfield and first-year coach Nancy Somera. 

NEC-champion LIU is the only team in the bracket with a losing record and the Sharks have a first-year coach in Amable Martinez.

Coastal Carolina coach Jozef Foreman left a few games into the season and Steve Loeswick took over on an interim basis. Loeswick was named Sun Belt coach of the year and his Chanticleers won the SBC tournament and the NCAA bid,

Keegan Cook is in his first year at Minnesota and so is Matt Jones at UC Santa Barbara, promoted when Nicole Lantagne Welch retired after last season.

Liesa Rosen is the first-year coach at Fresno State, the surprise winner from the Mountain West, and Jamie Morrison got the SEC’s Texas A&M back into the tournament in his first year.

Ramblings

A little of this and that: The Kansas City Roos didn’t make the tournament after losing in the Summit final to Omaha, but there is a Roos in the field. That’s because the coach at the SoCon’s Wofford, making its first NCAA appearance, is ninth-year head coach Lynze Roos … 

The only player in the top five nationally in kills per set in the tournament is Skylar Fields of USC (5.19/set), who was second to Evansville’s Giula Cardona (5.34). Cardona led in total kills (593), followed by Tulsa’s Kayley Cassaday (592), Fields (586), Ohio State’s Emily Londot (546) and Raina Terry of Illinois (539) … The top three blocks leaders — UIC’s Zahria Woodard (177), Drake’s Kacie Rewerts (171) and Northwestern State’s Reaghan Thompson (164) — are not in the tournament. Sophie Thompons of Colgate (163) is the only one in the top six in the field. Next are Wisconsin’s Carter Booth and Purdue’s Raven Colvin tied for seventh at 157 …

Penn State, which plays Yale, is the only school to compete in every NCAA Division I Tournament since it started in 1981. Yale is coached by Erin Applebman, who was an assistant at Penn State for eight years, during which time the Nittany Lions won the 1999 NCAA title. We featured Yale earlier this month …

We have two high school teammates from here in Baton Rouge in the tournament. Amber Igiede is the star middle for Hawai’i. The Big West Championship MVP played club for Red Storm. Southeastern Louisiana, a team that boasts 14 Louisiana players on its roster, includes sophomore DS Lexi Gonzales, who played much of her career for my club, Volleyball Baton Rouge, before I retired VBR in 2019. Both Igiede and Gonzales played for Rob Smith at St. Michael HS. And how about this: They’re both at Oregon, where Southeastern Louisiana plays the Ducks on Thursday and Hawai’i plays Iowa State. The winners play Friday … 

ICYMI from our Sunday-night story, the teams with the longest winning streaks are Atlantic 10-champion Dayton (26), Conference USA-champion Western Kentucky (24), Missouri Valley-champion Northern Iowa (21), MAC-champion Western Michigan (20), Ivy League-champion Yale (17), SEC-champion Kentucky (16), American Athletic-champion SMU (15), and Big East-champion Creighton (15) … 

San Diego is the first team to make the NCAA national semifinals one year and fail to make the tournament the next since defending-champion Stanford in 2020/21. Worth noting is that Stanford finished 2-8 in the COVID-marred spring of 2021. Before that, another team coached by Kevin Hambly, Illinois, played in the title match in 2011 but didn’t make the tournament in 2012. Before that it was USC in 1986 … 

The NCAA finally updated its RPI on its website. Nebraska was No. 1, followed by Stanford, Louisville, Pittsburgh, Wisconsin, Texas, Kentucky, Oregon, Creighton and Arkansas …

And a little history: Texas swept Louisville for the 2022 national title, its first since 2012. In the semifinals, Texas San Diego, making its first national semifinals appearance, and Louisville beat Pittsburgh in five as two ACC teams made their second and back-to-back final-four appearances.

Just 12 programs have won since the NCAA began holding women’s volleyball championships in 1981: Stanford (9 times), Penn State (7), Nebraska (5), UCLA (4), Hawai’i (3), Long Beach State (3), USC (3), Texas (3), Pacific (2), Kentucky (1), Wisconsin (1) and Washington (1).

Kentucky of the SEC was the only team outside of the Big Ten or Pac-12 to win the crown since Texas of the Big 12 won in 2012 when it won in the spring of 2021.

Wisconsin-Nebraska TV ratings

From our Larry Hamel, who covers the TV side of volleyball:

The NCAA volleyball match on Black Friday aired on Big Ten Network recorded a total-average viewership of 507,000 and a rating of .14 in the 18-49 demographic.

That’s down from the 587,000 that watched the Badgers and Huskers on Black Friday in 2022. The viewership also is less than the 612,000 that tuned in on BTN for the first meeting between the Big Ten powers in October.

Nonetheless, a viewership of 500,000 is noteworthy. Last year’s Black Friday match had a football game leading into it and this year the Iowa-Nebraska tussle was telecast on over-the-air Fox. BTN used a replay of the first meeting between Wisconsin and Nebraska in Lincoln as a lead-in. Nonetheless, Nebraska-Wisconsin ranked No. 13 on the day on cable in the 18-49 demo, according to the chart on the SpoilerTV site. It was the only BTN program in the top 150.

The ratings for the NCAA bracket-announcement show that aired Sunday on ESPN should come out on Wednesday. That should be a number to note, since the selection show was on flagship ESPN for the first time.

NIVC begins Wednesday

The 32-team tournament starts with Southern Illinois of the Missouri Valley Conference playing DePaul of the Big East and independent Chicago State facing the Valley’s Drake. Both those matches are at Drake in Des Moines, Iowa.

Play continues with eight more matches Thursday. Click here for the NIVC Tournament Central website with the schedule and more.

AVCA POW

The AVCA national player of the week is Wisconsin’s Sarah Franklin. The senior outside averaged five kills a set in sweeps of Nebraska and Iowa, which included getting 16 kills and 12 digs against the previously unbeaten Huskers. She is the first Wisconsin player to win the honor this season. For that matter, the AVCA has not had a school represented more than once since the first award was giving for the week ending August 27.

Click here for more and for the list of previous winners this season.

College Transfer Showcase

Our friends at MasterCoaches are conducting a recruiting event on Saturday, December 16, at the AVCA Convention/NCAA Championship in Tampa. 

The showcase is open to uncommitted players who have officially entered the NCAA Transfer Portal, junior-college transfers who have completed their two years of eligibility, and NAIA and international athletes.

The event is being organized and managed by Mick Haley, Bob Bertucci, Bill Walton, Fran Flory, and Cathy George. Haley is the former national-championship-winning coach at Texas and USC and coached the 2000 USA Olympic team. Bertucci and Walton are longtime former college coaches with extensive resumes and former LSU coach Flory and former Michigan State coach George are now Pro Volleyball Federation coaches.

Click here for more information.

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