NCAA volleyball: Arkansas St., Niagara hire coaches; Wednesday men; AVCA polls, honors

Arkansas State and Niagara hired women’s volleyball coaches, there are four matches on Wednesday’s NCAA Division I-II men’s schedule, and we have the AVCA polls and weekly honors in this NCAA volleyball report.

In men’s volleyball Wednesday, the MIVA’s No. 8 Ball State plays at Ohio State. 

In the MPSF, No. 7 Pepperdine is home for CSUN.

There are two Conference Carolinas matches when King goes to North Greenville and Belmont Abbey is at Lees-McRae.

ARKANSAS ST. HIRES GERWIG — Brian Gerwig, a former assistant at ASU who spent last season as an assistant at Houston, takes over a team that finished 15-14 last season, 6-10 in the Sun Belt. Gerwig fills the vacancy created when his former boss, Santiago Restrepo, resigned. 

Gerwig coached at Arkansas State in 2017 and 2018. He is a former high school coach and was an assistant at Western Kentucky and George Washington.

NIAGARA TABS CEFRA — The school hired Temple assistant coach Ren Cefra. Cefra, who was at Temple for seven years, has also worked at Minot State, Nevada-Reno, St. John’s and Chaminade. 

He takes over a team that finished 13-15 last season season, 10-8 in the MAAC. Donna Day, who was promoted to head coach in 2018, was fired in January.

AVCA MEN’S POLL — Ohio State dropped out and so did McKendree. UC Irvine is back in at No. 13 and Stanford is back in at No. 14. NJIT held steady at No. 15.

Otherwise the AVCA top 15 stayed pretty much the same. There was no movement of more than on spot. UCLA is still No. 1, Penn State is now No. 2, trading places with No. 3 Long Beach State. Hawai’i is still fourth and USC at No. 5 and UC Santa Barbara at No. 6 traded places.

Click here for the complete AVCA Men’s Division I-II Poll.

AVCA MEN’S POW — The national player of the week is UC Santa Barbara junior outside Ryan Wilcox. He averaged 5.5 kills and hit .638 in two sweeps of CSUN. No player has repeated the honor this season.

AVCA BEACH POLL — The top 10 teams stayed the same. The first movement was at No. 11, when FAU moved up a spot, trading places with now No. 12 Cal Poly. Cal State Bakersfield dropped out and Tulane moved in at No. 20.

Click here for the complete AVCA Collegiate Beach Volleyball Poll.

AVCA TOP PAIR — The national NCAA Beach pair of the week is LSU’s Parker Bracken and Kylie Deberg. They won four times in South Carolina last week and are 9-0 this season.