The NCAA Division I women’s volleyball tournament begins Thursday with 12 of the 32 first-round matches. The remaining 20 are on Friday, when Thursday’s first-round winners face off as well.
Action begins at 4:45 p.m. Eastern when Bowling Green plays Western Kentucky at Kentucky. Later, Kentucky faces Loyola Chicago.
At 5 p.m. Georgia Tech plays Wright State at Marquette, where later Marquette plays Ball State.
Two more matches start at 5:30. Rice plays Colorado at Baylor, followed by Baylor vs. Stephen F. Austin, and Miami plays Kansas at Nebraska, followed by Nebraska vs. Delaware State.
At 6 p.m., Towson plays Georgia at Texas and then the No. 21 Longhorns play Fairleigh Dickinson.
The last site of the day starts at 8 p.m. Eastern when Washington State plays UNLV at San Diego before the host team plays Northern Colorado.
We have a breakdown of each of those matches, plus a list of Friday’s first-round matches. But first some TV info and extra information about how to watch.
TV/STREAMING
(AND IT’S NOT ABC, ESPN, ESPN2 OR ESPNU): Every one of the 32 first-round and 16 second-round matches can been seen, but only on ESPN+. We have the links in our VolleyballMag.com TV & Streaming Listings. One of the first-round matches, Fairleigh Dickinson at Texas, can also be seen on the Longhorn Network.
Announcers? The host schools choose their own.
That means that if you get a top-16 seed you not only play at home, you get to hire who you want to do the broadcast at your site. In many cases, that includes former coaches at the school, local volleyball afficionados or friends of the program, including area club coaches/directors whose clubs have players on the roster.
New to ESPN’s volleyball coverage this year is a “whiparound” studio show called The 5th Set. It features host Sam Gore, the iconic Paul Sunderland and Jennifer Hoffman. It, too, is on ESPN+ and may keep hard-cores from having four devices running at once the next three days.
Understand this: By ESPN showing all matches on ESPN+ it means that there are no first- or second-round matches on ABC or its cable outlets ESPN, ESPN2 or ESPNU.
Last March, for example, the NCAA Tournament women’s basketball play-in game between Incarnate Word and Howard was on ESPNU. Howard’s first-round game at South Carolina, at 2 p.m. on Friday, March 18, was on ESPN.
For what it’s worth, there is a women’s pre-conference basketball game between Notre Dame and…
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