Volleyball Today: Big NCAA slate; AVP Chicago; big TV ratings; Pilar Victoria dies

The season got underway on Tuesday with Nebraska topping Kentucky and Louisville outlasting Wisconsin.

Now, the rest of the NCAA women’s volleyball season begins Friday with more than 200 matches, including quite a few teams playing twice either Friday or Saturday.

ESPN reported outstanding viewership for Tuesday’s season opener when Nebraska played Kentucky

The AVP Chicago Open begins Friday morning on Oak Street Beach on Lake Michigan, the USA women have a sitting match at the Paralympics in Paris, and a Chicago high school needs a volleyball coach.

There is also sad news. Former Arkansas star Pilar Victoria, who also played at Texas, was found dead in her apartment in Türkiye. 

And leave with a most bizarre situation at a Chicago high school.

Matches to watch in NCAA volleyball

As we’ve noted, there are a mere 218 matches on Friday’s NCAA Division I women’s schedule. If you go to our TV and Streaming Listings page, you can get links on where many of the matches will be shown.

These are some of the matches of note Friday and note that there are too many to note them all:

NC State vs. Creighton
Pittsburgh vs. Oregon
Penn State vs. Tennessee
UCLA vs. Georgia Tech
USC vs. Pepperdine
Northern Iowa vs. Dayton
UC Santa Barbara vs. Georgia
Florida vs. Colorado State
Southeastern Louisiana vs. BYU
Houston vs. Omaha

Me?

I was in Louisville on Tuesday for Nebraska-Kentucky and then was one of the late-night warriors who stayed until the end of Louisville-Wisconsin. After spending Wednesday with the Indiana University team and coach Steve Aird, I spent Thursday in the great midwestern city of Indianapolis. 

And the hometown team is no longer IUPUI, but IU Indianapolis, and those Jaguars and coach Andrew Kroger open their season this afternoon against Eastern Michigan. 

First up is SIUE (not the real SIU, say those of us who went to Southern Illinois University at Carbondale) vs. EMU at 10 a.m. 

After watching that early match, it’s up the road to West Lafayette to Purdue for a doubleheader, first UC Davis vs. UMBC, followed by No. 8 Purdue playing host to Kansas State, a team that got plenty of votes in the preseason AVCA poll. I’m looking forward to seeing Purdue coach Dave Shondell and his team, including two stars in the game, Eva Hudson and Chloe Chicoine, and Kansas State coach Jason Mansfield.

The trip concludes in Milwaukee with what should be four great matches, No. 1 Texas vs. No. 3 Wisconsin and No. 18 Minnesota vs. No. 5 Stanford on Sunday, followed by Wisconsin vs. Stanford and Texas vs. Minnesota on Sunday.

AVP Chicago Open begins Friday

There are 16 teams on each side, including Trevor Crabb and Theo Brunner as the No. 1 men’s seed and Olympians Kristen Nuss and Taryn Kloth topping the women’s field. Both pairs won gold at the Manhattan Beach Open.

The field includes four other sets of Olympians, including Canadians Brandie Wilkerson and Melissa Humana-Paredes, who won silver in Paris. They are seeded third, while the USA’s Kelly Cheng and Sara Hughes are seeded second. On the men’s side, the field includes second-seeded Andy Benesh and Miles Partain and fourth-seeded Chase Budinger and Miles Evans.

Click here to read our friend Larry Hamel’s preview in the Chicago Sun-Times.

Click here to follow along: https://avp.com/brackets/ and here to watch the stream: https://www.ballylive.com/

Big AVCA First Serve Showcase ratings for ESPN

A strong start to the ’24 @NCAAVolleyball season following @AVCAVolleyball First Serve Showcase

@KentuckyVB–@HuskerVB becomes the 2nd most-watched live reg. season #NCAAWVB match on ESPN platforms
Audience peak 441K viewers
40% of audience across both matches were women pic.twitter.com/QdX6DktPJ0

— ESPN PR (@ESPNPR) August 29, 2024

USA sitting women fall to China

In their first match of the Paralympics in Paris, the USA women lost 21-25, 20-25, 18-25, 24-26 to China. The USA, which has won the last two Paralympics, got 18 kills from Heather Erickson and 11 from Katie Bridge. 

Their next match is Sunday against France.

Pilar Victoria dies in Turkiye

Pilar Victoria, the Puerto Rican who played two years at Texas and then finished at Arkansas, was found dead in her apartment in Türkiye on Thursday, according to multiple media reports. She was 28.

Victoria was playing professionally for the Nilüfer Belediyespor club in Bursa, Türkiye. According to the Turkish news website Haberler.com, Victoria’s body was discovered in her apartment when officials went to check on her after she did not attend the team training Thursday morning.

Victoria, a 5-foot-11 outside, played in two final fours for Texas and became an All-SEC player at Arkansas.

Amundsen High School needs a volleyball coach

There’s a job opening at Amundsen High School in Chicago.

As the Chicago Sun-Times reported:

Conservative talk show host Amy Jacobson resigned as Amundsen High School’s volleyball coach Wednesday after she drew criticism for mocking Gus Walz, the son of Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz, on her radio show last week.

Amundsen Principal Kristi Eilers notified parents in a letter stating, “Effective immediately, Coach Amy Jacobson is no longer part of the athletic program at Amundsen.”
Jacobson was seen on a livestream laughing, and along with co-host Dan Proft, mimicking Gus Walz during their Aug. 22 radio show “Chicago’s Morning Answer” on WIND 560-AM.

In the report by the Chicago Tribune:

After the show aired, a neighborhood parent Facebook group, along with a host of comments on Reddit, erupted with criticism of Jacobson’s remarks. Local parent Beth Hegelund — whose child attends McPherson Elementary and plans to attend Amundsen, their neighborhood high school, in the future — called on parents to write to the principal about Jacobson’s comments.
Amundsen’s physical education teacher, Raquel Acosta, will be filling in while the school looks for a new coach.
One would have to wonder about her lasting this long as the school’s coach. As the Sun-Times noted:

Jacobson previously worked as a reporter for WMAQ-TV NBC 5. She was fired from that job in 2007 after a WBBM-TV CBS 2 news crew secretly filmed her clad in a bikini with her two children at the home of a man whose wife had been missing for more than two months.

Read more about it in the Chicago Sun-Times and more in the Chicago Tribune. 

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