The last season in which the Oregon volleyball program won 14 straight matches, the Ducks made it all the way to the Final Four. A decade later, those milestones could be in reach again.
The Ducks will open the 2022 NCAA Tournament on Friday when they host Loyola Marymount in Matthew Knight Arena at 7 p.m., following a matchup between Arkansas and Utah State at 4 p.m. Having set a program record with 17 wins in Pac-12 play this fall, Oregon brings a 13-match win streak into the postseason, the Ducks’ longest since the 2012 Final Four team and also the 2010 team began their seasons by going 14-0.
The disappointment of last season’s first-round NCAA Tournament loss to Kansas still looms large for the Ducks. But so too does the high level they’ve played at throughout the current season.
“We know we’re not invincible,” UO coach Matt Ulmer said. “But we know if we play our best, we have a shot against everybody.”
The Ducks (23-5) came into 2022 dreaming of their first ever Pac-12 title, and took a step toward that goal with a resounding sweep of perennial conference power Stanford at home on Sept. 25. That ended up being the Cardinal’s only loss in conference play, while Oregon’s only hiccup was a three-match losing streak in mid-October when setter Hannah Pukis was sidelined by an injury – and, more significantly, when the UO women endured an uncharacteristic stretch of poor play from the service line.
But Oregon got back to its winning ways at UCLA on Oct. 16, kicking off what is now a 13-match win streak entering Friday night. The Ducks boast the newly crowned Pac-12 freshman of the year in hitter Mimi Colyer, a do-everything senior star in Brooke Nuneviller and a roster of complementary pieces that have made practices every bit as competitive as games this season.
“We’re a really mature team; they’re super calm, they’ve been through this,” Colyer said of Oregon’s veterans. “So I feel like I’m kind of just feeding off that. So I personally don’t think I have a bunch of nerves – but I’m excited to start playing.”
Nuneviller was a freshman on Oregon’s 2018 Elite Eight team. She knows the elation of having helped the Ducks upset host Minnesota in the Sweet 16 of that tournament, and also the disappointment of a Sweet 16 loss in the spring of 2021 to Purdue, not to mention the disheartening sweep at the hands of Kansas in the first round last fall.
Throughout their sustained success this season, the Ducks have spoken about staying in…
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