“This tournament has been something else. I mean, it’s just balance, the competitiveness, seemingly every single match and then the number of five-setters that have already happened, barely halfway through. It’s just, it’s unbelievable.”
What Wisconsin coach Kelly Sheffield said.
We got what we wanted — well, not those who arrived early at the Devaney Center who were rooting for the upset — albeit a couple of rounds early, when Nebraska will play Sheffield’s Wisconsin on Sunday for a spot in the national semifinals.
Friday’s four round-of-16 matches went to form, but not without the twists and turns that have made this NCAA Tournament so exciting and unpredictable.
Nonetheless … Creighton ended Texas’s two-year hold on the NCAA volleyball championship trophy, Penn State got past Marquette, Wisconsin survived a tremendous effort by Logan Lednicky and Texas A&M, and Nebraska took care of Dayton.
On Saturday, Pittsburgh, the top seed in its regional, will play host to third-seeded Kentucky at 5 p.m. Eastern. Then Louisville, the top-seed in its regional, plays second-seeded Stanford in a 7:30 p.m. match that should be in Palo Alto because Stanford should have been the fourth seed overall and Louisville the No. 5.
On Sunday, which will provide tremendous TV coverage for the sport, Nebraska, the No. 1 seed in its regional, plays host to second-seeded Wisconsin at 3 p.m. on ABC. At 8:30 p.m. on ESPN, Penn State, the No. 1 seed in its regional, is home for the second seed, Creighton. The latter presents an unfortunate situation in that two of the most well-liked and respected coaches in the game, who happen to be women and moms, go up against each other in Penn State’s Katie Schumacher-Cawley and Creighton’s Kirsten Bernthal Booth. The only other woman coach left is Louisville’s Dani Busboom Kelly.
Also in this NCAA edition of Volleyball Today, there were two more upsets in Division II as Saturday’s title match is set between fourth-seeded Lynn and seventh-seeded San Francisco State; the NIVC has its second semifinal when Bowling Green plays St. John’s for the right to play Arizona; and the coaching carousel spun at Cincinnati, where Molly Alvey is out after 13 years:
NCAA Tournament Saturday
Pittsburgh (32-1), which has won 17 matches in a row and survived a five-setter with Oregon on Thursday, plays Kentucky (23-7), which has won 14…
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