NCAA volleyball: 27 kills for Cardona; Utah State tops MWC; AVCA; Texas teams are tops

Giula Cardona had 27 kills for Evansville, Utah State took over the Mountain West lead, a Dane did great for Kennesaw State, we have the AVCA poll and POW, and teams from Texas are dominating.

All of that follows, but first a look at Wednesday’s NCAA Division I women’s volleyball schedule that includes two matches in the Big Ten, when AVCA No. 15 Purdue goes to Indiana and AVCA No. 24 Minnesota goes to Michigan. Purdue is 4-2, alone in fourth and two games back of the undefeated 6-0 threesome of Nebraska, Wisconsin and Penn State. Indiana is 3-3 and trying to stay in the mix, while Minnesota (2-4) is tied with Northwestern and Illinois. Michigan is 1-5.

There are three Big 12 matches, including AVCA No. 25 Iowa State at Kansas State. UCF which has won six in a row, is home for West Virginia and TCU goes to Oklahoma. Texas leads the league at 6-0, UCF is 5-0, Iowa State is 4-1 and TCU is 4-1.

The two SEC matches have Georgia at South Carolina and Missouri at Alabama.

The lone ACC match shows Virginia Tech at Wake Forest.

Villanova has a Big East match at Georgetown while Denver plays Omaha in The Summit League. Omaha has won five in a row to improve to 6-10 overall, 5-1 in the conference.

In the MAAC, the three matches include Saint Peters at Marist. Saint Peters is 0-19 and one of three winless teams remaining with 0-15 Le Moyne and 0-10 Hampton. 

Want to watch? We have the conference-by-conference schedule with viewing links for any match that is being shown in our VolleyballMag.com TV & Streaming Listings.

AVCA POLL, POW: The top six — Wisconsin, Nebraska, Stanford, Washington State, Oregon and Louisville — stayed the same this week in the AVCA Division I Women’s Volleyball Poll. The biggest jump was by Arizona State, up four sports to No. 19. Ohio State dropped out but no one entered because there was a tie for 25th last week. Click here to see the complete top 25.

The AVCA national player of the week is Madison Scheer of Auburn. The sophomore outside averaged 4.13 kills/set in a sweep of Florida and five-set SEC win at South Carolina. She hit .472. The last Auburn player to be so honored was Rani Whitson in 1996.

TEXAS, TEXAS, TEXAS: Teams from Texas rule. To wit:

— Texas, No. 6 in the VolleyballMag.com Super 16 Media Poll, tops the Big 12 at 6-0;

— Stephen F. Austin, of Nacogdoches, Texas, is 6-0, the lone team still unbeaten in the WAC;

— Rice, of Houston, is 7-0 and the only team still undefeated in…