We’ve only finished the second weekend of the NCAA Division I women’s volleyball season and things are truly in full swing.
We’ve got the schedule, the latest AVCA Coaches Poll, the power-five players of the week, some of the POW highlights around the nation, and a nod to one of the sports coaching veterans.
Tuesday’s schedule: The ACC is busy, especially in Virginia and the Carolinas. Virginia Tech goes to VCU, Duke is at UNC Greensboro, Virginia is home for Liberty, NC State plays host to East Carolina, and Clemson entertains Appalachian State.Â
There is one match involving a Big 12 team when Iowa State plays host to Northern Iowa.Â
The SEC has two matches as Arkansas is home for Arkansas-Pine Bluff and South Carolina is home for Charlotte.
The Big Ten and Pac-12 are idle.
Plenty of other regional non-conference matches spice the schedule.Â
Two Big East teams play Tuesday as Providence goes to Bryant and St. John’s is at Hofstra.Â
There’s the battle of Nashville when Lipscomb goes to Belmont, and two Houston-area matchups when Rice goes to Houston Baptist and Houston travels to Lamar.Â
North Florida is at South Florida, Southeast Missouri State goes to Southern Illinois, and Bowling Green goes to Oakland.Â
Eastern Kentucky is at Western Kentucky, Loyola (Maryland) is at Howard, IUPUI plays at Fort Wayne, Navy is at George Mason and in Pennsylvania Duquesne is at Robert Morris. New Hampshire is at Northeastern, NJIT goes to Lehigh and NC Central is at Elon.
Texas Tech tops NIU: In the only match on Monday’s schedule, the Red Raiders of the Big 12 (4-3) won in four at Northern Illinois of the Mid-American (2-6). Emily Hill had 19 kills in the 25-18, 18-25, 26-24, 25-14 victory, adding three blocks and four digs. Allison White and Brooke Kanas had 10 kills each. Kennedy Wallace had 14 kills, two digs and three blocks for NIU.
AVCA top 25: The second weekly AVCA Division I Coaches Poll showed the same top three teams, unanimous No. 1 Stanford, Nebraska and Texas, but then things were pretty jumbled after that as the coaches are trying to figure out who’s what in this early going.
Penn State moved up two spots to No. 4, and Baylor, which scored upsets at Wisconsin and Marquette, made a huge leap from 17th to No. 5.
There were other huge moves, as well. Pittsburgh jumped four spots to No. 6 and Marquette did to the same to No. 7.Â
Minnesota stayed at No. 8, Wisconsin dropped five spots to ninth, and Oregon didn’t play and dropped a notch to No. 10.
While Illinois dropped nine spots to No. 14, Creighton jumped six spots to 17th.
The biggest fall was by Michigan, which went from No. 14 to 24th.
New this week are Colorado, in at No. 19, and Missouri, in at No. 21. Tennessee and San Diego dropped out.
Click here for the complete AVCA poll.
Power-5 POWs: The Big 12 top honor went to Baylor’s Yossiana Pressley, who was lights out in two upsets in Wiscsonsin, getting 31 kills against Wisconsin and 20 more against Marquette. She was also named the AVCA national player of the year. Her freshman middle teammate, Kara McGhee, is the defensive honoree, while the top freshman is Texas middle Molly Phillips. …
The Big Ten honored Penn State’s Kaitlyn Hord after the sophomore middle had 20 kills in two sweeps, hitting .545, and had seven blocks. We had a rare Rutgers sighting in the B1G POW as senior libero Karysa Swackenberg was the defensive player after averaging 4.3 digs per set in three matches. A big question for Minnesota was if its setting would fall off after the graduation of Samantha Seliger-Swenson. Senior Kylie Miller is the B1G setter of the week. And Northwestern’s Temi Thomas is the top freshman …
The SEC POW is Missouri junior outside Kylie Denberg, who averaged 5.36 kills and hit .510 in three wins. Ole Miss middle Aubrey Sultemeier and South Carolina middle Claire Edwards shared the defensive honor. Missouri’s Andrea Fuentes got the setter award and the top freshman is Ole Miss outside Anna Bair …
Duke’s Ade Owokoniran and Pitt’s Kayla Lund shared the POW honor and Notre Dame’s Kiara Schmidt is the top libero …Â
And in the Pac-12, could there be anyone else? Stanford senior Kathryn Plummer is the offensive POW after getting 55 kills (34 against Texas) and averaging .688 kills in two wins. She hit .462 as she won her seventh POW honor. The top defensive player is Colorado’s Meegan Hart and the top freshman is her teammate, Jilly Schneggenburger.Â
POWs around the nation: UC Santa Barbara senior outside Lindsey Ruddins is the Big West POW for the 10th time. She averaged 4.54 kills, 2.62 digs and .69 blocks per set in a 3-0 week …
New Hampshire senior libero Emily Witsaman is the America East top defensive player for the eighth time since the start of last season … Houston freshman outside Abbie Jackson had 87 kills in a 4-0 week and is the American Athletic offensive POW … Jasmin Sneed averaged 1.75 blocks per set in a 3-1 week for VCU and is the Atlantic 10 defensive POW …
The Big South POWs are Fighting Camels, Sarah Colla on offense and Campbell teammate Elyse Gross on defense … Brianna Daphnis of Northeastern had 44 kills in three wins for Northeastern to be the Colonial offensive POW … Rice’s Nicole Lennon is the Conference USA offensive honoree for the second time in as many weeks for averaging 4.75 kills and hitting .311 in four matches …
Taylor Wolf of Green Bay is the Horizon offensive POW for averaging 4.42 kills in three matches … Kaleigh Oates of Quinnipiac had 45 kills in a 3-0 week and hit .588 and is the Metro Atlantic POW … The Mid-American hands out six awards each week. One of them went to Bowling Green freshman Petro Indrova as the outside hitter from the Czech Republic had 42 kills and 20 digs for three matches …Â
Robert Morris libero Nikolette Zanolli averaged 6.82 digs for three matches and is the Northeast Conference defensive POW … Olivia Lohmeier, a Morehead State junior outside, averaged 4.89 kills in a 3-0 week and is the Ohio Valley offensive POW … Alli Lowe was huge for Colgate and is the Patriot offensive POW. In three matches, she had 56 kills, 22 digs, seven blocks and three aces while hitting .311 …
ETSU’s Kaela Massey also had big numbers. She averaged 4.12 kills and hit .545 in three matches and is the Southern Conference offensive POW … Texas A&M-Corpus Christi senior setter Madison Green had triple-doubles in two of three matches and is the Southland Conference offensive POW …
Jackson State’s Jylen Whitten had 38 kills and 31 digs in three matches and is the SWAC offensive POW … South Dakota sophomore setter Madison Jurgens is the Summit League offensive POW and her teammate, sophomore middle Maddie Wiedenfeld, is the defensive honoree …Â
The Sun Belt offensive POW is Appalachian State junior middle Kara Spicer after she had 36 kills and hit .509 and also had 11 blocks in three matches … The WAC offensive POW is UT Rio Grande Valley senior right-side Barbara Silva and the defensive POW is NM State junior middle Julianna Salanoa.
600 for Sagula: North Carolina has a tough go of it the past few seasons, but when the Tar Heels beat UC Irvine on Friday night, it gave veteran coach Joe Sagula his 600th career victory at the school. Sagula, in his 39th year as a college head coach, has an overall record of 803-469 and he’s 600-346 in his 30th season at UNC. The Tar Heels of the ACC (1-4) play Miami (Ohio) in Rochester, Michigan, for a neutral-site match on Friday and then go to Michigan State on Sunday.
Hawai’i and their Defensive POW, Sky Williams are notably absent from your “perfunctory” round-up. But sadly, this seems par for the course with vbmag.com
Actually, it’s VolleyballMag.com, and our POW roundup is not all-inclusive, just hitting on the highlights. There 32 conferences and almost 350 Division I teams so it’s hard to keep up with every single one of them. And we were on the Hawai’i bandwagon before anyone and you would know that if you read our daily NCAA roundups.