Tennessee’s Keondreya Granberry hits through the Arkansas block of Sania Petties/Ian Cox, Tennessee Athletics
Finally.
This is the day when the top two teams in the VolleyballMag.com Super 16 Media Pollface off: Top-ranked Wisconsin goes to No. 2 Nebraska in a battle of Big Ten teams that are each 18-0 overall and 9-0 in the Big Ten.
But we can’t get to that before talking about another freaky Friday, in which No. 4 Washington State lost at unranked USC, which pulled off a late-night Pac-12 reverse sweep. Or that No. 5 Louisville had to pull off an ACC reverse sweep of its own to win at Wake Forest. Or that No. 7 Arkansas won in four at Tennessee in the SEC, or that unranked Missouri swept at AVCA No. 23 Auburn.
The Citadel swept Samford to improve to 21-0, 9-0 in the SoCon and plays at Chattanooga Saturday,, and Le Moyne finally broke through as the 1-17 Dolphins beat Stonehill in the NEC.
Line of the day: Purdue Fort Wayne’s Panna Ratkai, a redshirt-freshman outside hitter from Hungary, had 35 kills in a five-set loss to Milwaukee, most kills in the Horizon League since 2011. And she also had four aces, three blocks and seven digs.
Worth noting: Paige Briggs, who not only had 14 kills and hit .522, had 10 aces in Western Kentucky’s sweep of Sam Houston.
The recaps and top performances follow, but first a look at Saturday’s NCAA Division I women’s volleyball schedule, starting with the long-awaited Wisconsin-at-Nebraska match. The 7 p.m. Central match will be shown on the Big Ten Network and it features the nation’s top offensive team, Wisconsin, against one of the best on defense. Wisconsin leads the B1G in kills per set (14.02) and hitting percentage (.315). Nebraska leads the nation in opponent hitting percentage (.123). Wisconsin is a veteran team; Nebraska is young. And both teams are dealing with injuries. Wisconsin has won 27 B1G matches in a row, including 10 sweeps in a row; Nebraska leads the all-time series 19-13-1, Wisconsin has won the last 10.
The team just behind, 8-1 Penn State, is off Saturday but plays host to Purdue on Sunday. Also in the B1G Saturday, Iowa is at Maryland, Michigan at Northwestern and Ohio State at Indiana.
There are three Big 12 matches and all involve ranked teams. AVCA No. 24 is at No. 21 Baylor, AVCA No. 22 Houston is at Texas Tech and AVCA No. 20 Kansas is at TCU.
The ACC, Pac-12 and SEC have the day off.
Dayton, No. 15 in the VBM Poll, won its 16th in a row Friday by beating Saint Louis and plays the Billikens again Saturday in the Atlantic 10.
There’s a full slate in the Big East, including AVCA No. 15 Creighton at Providence. Creighton is a game back of Marquette, which plays at Xavier, and St. John’s, which plays at Villanova.
Still winless: Saint Peter’s (0-23) gets another shot in the NEC when the Peacocks play Rider and 0-10 Hampton plays host to UNC Wilmington in the CAA.
PAC-12: USC (12-7, 6-3) rallied for a 17-25, 14-25, 25-22, 25-23, 15-8 reverse-sweep win over visiting Washington State 17-3, 7-2) for the Trojans’ first win over a top-five team since 2018. Skylar Fields led USC with 21 kills, a block and 15 digs. Londay Wijay returned to the lineup to get 12 kills, an assist, an ace and nine digs. Rylie McGinest had 12 kills in in 19 errorless attacks and had an assist and three digs. USC hit .246 as setter Mia Tuaniga had a kill, 48 assists, two blocks and 15 digs. WSU, which hit .279, got 18 kills from Pia Timmer, who had three assists, four blocks and eight digs. Iman Isanovic had 13 kills, an assist, two aces, four blocks and 11 digs …
League-leading No. 3 Stanford (15-2, 8-0) hit .367 and swept at Oregon State (7-11, 2-6) as Kendall Kipp had 15 kills in 30 errorless attacks to go with eight blocks, two solo … No. 9 Oregon (16-3, 6-2) hit .406 and swept visiting Cal (13-6, 3-5) … No. 14 Arizona State (18-2, 6-2) swept at Utah (8-10, 3-5) … UCLA (10-8, 2-6) swept visiting Washington (13-6, 4-4) … Colorado (10-9, 2-6) swept visiting Arizona (6-13, 1-7). The Buffs hit .330 and Lexi Hadrych had 16 kills, hit .419 and had two digs and two blocks.
ACC: Louisville (17-2, 8-1) rallied for a 21-25, 23-25, 25-15, 25-5, 15-7 win at Wake Forest (14-6, 5-4), and, no, that fourth-set score is not a typo. Louisville had more kills (56-43), aces (14-5), blocks (14-6) and digs (55-50) and had a substantial hitting percentage advantage (.338 to .097). Anna DeBeer led the Cardinals with 17 kills while hitting .359 to go with an assist, five aces and 12 digs. PK Kong had 10 kills in 19 errorless attacks and six blocks, five solo, and Charitie Luper had 15 kills, hit .351 and had an assist, an ace, four digs and three blocks, one solo. Wake’s Paige Forest had 12 kills …
No. 7 Pittsburgh (18-3, 9-1) swept at NC State (15-5, 5-4) … No. 13 Georgia Tech (16-3, 7-2) beat visiting Duke (12-8, 3-6) in four … Florida State (14-7, 8-1) kept pace with a sweep of visiting Boston College (14-9, 3-6) … Miami (13-6, 6-3) swept visiting Syracuse (2-17, 0-9) … Virginia Tech (12-8, 2-7) beat visiting Notre Dame (10-7, 4-5) in five … North Carolina (10-8, 4-5) won in five at Clemson (12-9, 3-6) behind 25 kills from Mabrey Shaffmaster, who had an assist, an ace, 15 digs and five blocks, two solo.
SEC: Arkansas (18-2, 8-0) maintained its lead with a 25-27, 25-16, 25-22, 25-20 win at Tennessee (16-3. 7-2), its first in Knoxville in nine seasons. Arkansas, which hit .321, got 24 kills from Taylor Head, who hit .362 and had an assist, 21 digs and a block. Maggie Cartwright had 13 kills, an assist, 12 digs and four blocks, one solo. Jillian Gillen had 12 kills, an assist, five digs and three blocks. Hannah Hogue, who had 49 assists, had 28 digs and a block. Courtney Jackson had 21 digs, eight assists and an ace. Tennessee hit .153. Raeven Chase, who had five blocks, and Jenaisya Moore had 13 kills each. Yellaniz Torres had 30 digs and four assists …
Missouri (13-7, 5-4) not only won at Auburn (14-5, 4-4), it swept the meeting of Tigers. Jordan Iliff had 13 kills, hit .357 and had an assist, two aces, eight digs and two blocks. … Kentucky (9-7, 7-1) kept pace a game back of Arkansas with a sweep of Mississippi State (9-9, 2-6) … Florida (13-4, 5-3) won in four at Texas A&M (14-5, 6-3) as Sofia Victoria had 17 kills and hit .382.
BIG TEN: VBM No. 11 Penn State (14-4, 8-1) swept Iowa (8-13, 0-9) as Jess Mruzik had 14 kills and hit .306 … Illinois (9-10, 4-5) won in five at Maryland (13-8, 3-6) behind 15 kills from Jessica Nunge, who hit .308 and had an assist, an ace, two digs and a block. Kennedy Collins had nine kills in 17 errorless attacks, three aces, three digs and nine blocks, one solo … Minnesota (9-8, 5-4) swept visiting Rutgers (9-10, 1-8), which hit .046. Nine Minnesota players had kills, nine by Taylor Landfair.
BIG 12: No. 10 BYU (18-3, 7-2) hit .387 and swept visiting Iowa State (13-6. 4-4) for the second straight day. Erin Livingston led a balanced attack with 12 kills, hitting .455 … Cincinnati (10-9, 3-6), which lost in five at West Virginia (9-13, 2-7) on Thursday, won in five Friday as Abby Walker and Elissa Acantara had 17 kills each … Houston (10-7, 3-5) swept at Texas Tech (8-13, 1-8) as Abbie Jackson had 19 kills, hit .421 and had two assists, an ace, five digs and a solo block … Kansas State (11-8, 5-5) swept at Oklahoma (7-11, 1-8).
Around the nation
Dayton swept visiting Saint Louis to improve to 21-2, 10-0 in the A10 as eight Flyers had kills, 10 by Lexie Almodovar. Also in the A10, Fordham won in five at George Mason, but Mason’s Salem Yohannes had 26 kills, hit .350 and had four assists, an ace, 11 digs and three blocks, two solo …
In The Citadel’s SoCon sweep of Samford, eight Bulldogs got kills, eight each by Kathleen Bula and Ali Ruffin …
The bunch at the top of the Big East stayed the same as co-leaders Marquette hit .447 and swept at Butler and St. John’s did the same at Georgetown. Creighton swept at UConn. Nora Sis had 15 kills, her first kills for Creighton, which hit .390, since September 3. Also in the Big East, DePaul won in four at Xavier, which knocked the Musketeeers out of a tie with second-place Creighton, as Jill Pressly had 23 kills while hitting .348 to go with an assist, an ace, 21 digs and a block …
AVCA No. 25 Western Kentucky hit .464 and kept command of Conference USA with a sweep over visiting Sam Houston. Paige Briggs had 14 kills with two errors in 23 swings to hit .522 and had 10 aces and eight digs …
SMU (9-1) won its American Athletic showdown with Rice (7-2) and now leads Wichita State (8-1) by a game in the win column, while East Carolina (9-2) moved into third. SMU beat Rice in four as Jamison Wheeler had 15 kills, Emma Clothier 14 and Natalie Perdue 13. Wichita State beat Tulsa in four as Sophia Rohling had 18 kills for the Shockers and Kayley Cassaday had 18 for Tulsa. ECU beat Memphis in four despite hitting .112. Also in the AAC, North Texas won in four but South Florida’s Buse Hazan had 27 kills, hit .358 and had three aces, eight digs and a block …
ASUN-leader FGCU got 16 kills from Shelby Kent, who hit .467, and swept at Bellarmine to improve to 17-5, 9-0 with its 10th win in a row. Lipscomb stayed a game back with a four-set win over visiting Kennesaw State …
Milwaukee pulled into a tie for first in the Horizon League with idle Wright State by winning in five at Purdue Fort Wayne as Madi Malone had 26 kills, 18 digs, an ace and a solo block. But the star of the night was PFW’s Panna Ratkai, who tied the program rally-scoring record with 35 kills. Ratkai, who had 12 errors in 86 attacks, added four aces, three blocks and seven digs. Also in the HL, Natalie Stepanovich had 23 kills and hit .362 for Robert Morris in a four-set win over Oakland. Stepanovich hit .362 and had an assist, two aces, 14 digs and five blocks, one solo …
In the only Ivy League match, Yale built its first-place lead to two full games over idle Princeton with a sweep of Brown. Audrey Leak had 16 kills, hit .333 and had four digs and a block …
In the key MACtion match of the day, Buffalo (18-4, 8-2) held off visiting Ball State (12-9, 9-1) in five to hold maintain its two-game led in the East while dropping Ball State out of a tie in the West with Western Michigan (20-2, 10-0). Buffalo had four players with 12 or more kills, 16 each by Abby Leigh and Courtney Okwara. Leigh hit .438 and had four aces and five blocks, while Okwara hit .481. WMU swept at Eastern Michigan. Also in the MAC, Bowling Green hit .470 (44 kills with five errors in 83 attacks) in a sweep over Kent State …
Haley Bush went off for 28 kills in Drake’s Missouri Valley five-set win at Murray State. Bush hit .307 and had an ace and 18 digs. League-leading Northern Iowa swept at Belmont and Emily Holterhaus had 18 kills, hit .382, and had four blocks, three solo. Missouri State beat visiting UIC in five in their MVC match, but UIC’s Martina Delucchi had 26 kills …
Eastern Illinois moved into an Ohio Valley tie for first with idle Southeast Missouri with a five-set win at Tennessee Tech as Giovana Larregui Lopez had 24 kills and hit .400 to go with four blocks, one solo, and Natalie Mitchem had 20 kills with one error in 36 attacks to hit .536 to go with five blocks. Also in the OVC, Bianca Anderson had 25 kills for Southern Indiana in a four-set win at Western Illinois. Anderson had two errors in 38 swings and four blocks …
There was a big upset in the Patriot League when Bucknell won in five at Colgate, dropping Colgate into a first-place tie with Army West Point, which swept Lafayette. Bucknell beat Colgate for the first time since 2017 and broke the Red Raiders’ 33-match home winning streak in a wild one, 31-33, 25-17, 21-25, 25-22, 15-11. Four Bucknell players had 11 or more kills, 18 by Catherine Jamison. Gillian Hauschild had 18 kills for Colgate …
Coastal Carolina is alone at the top of the Sun Belt East after sweeping James Madison. Texas State got a big sweep over South Alabama. Troy is alone in first in the West after winning in five at Louisiana-Monroe as Tori Hester had 23 kills, six aces, 20 digs and a block. Also in the Sun Belt, Mia Wesley had 24 kills for Southern Miss in its five-set win at Arkansas State …
And Le Moyne, which lost its first 17 matches, broke through in the NEC with a sweep of visiting Stonehill. Kayla Anslett had 17 kill, hit .387 and had an assist, an ace, five digs and a block.
