NCAA Women
December 7, 2024
If you were looking for a Cinderella story in the NCAA Division I women’s volleyball tournament on Friday, you picked the wrong day.
The only significant upset saw a team from the Power Four SEC, Missouri, knock off a squad from the Power Four ACC, SMU, in a second-round match between seeded opponents.
In pick ‘em 4 vs. 5 tussles, highly regarded lower seeds Dayton (Atlantic 10) and Marquette (Big East) from non-power conferences prevailed.
Day 2 of the NCAA Tournament saw a blend of matches in the first and second rounds, and in the opening-rounders, the teams that figured to win did, the majority of them with ease.
One reverse sweep transpired: Oklahoma turned the tables on UTEP on a day when the SEC went 6-1.
Line of the night goes to 5-foot-8 Dayton dynamo Lexie Almodovar, who recorded 34 kills on 77 attacks with 13 errors (which included key winners in crunch time), two aces, eight digs and two blocks in the Flyers’ five-set triumph over Baylor. Almodovar eclipsed the 2,000-kill mark for her career.
In Division III, Juniata, coming off a reverse-sweep victory over Hope in the national semifinals, plays Wisconsin-Whitewater on Saturday. Juniata, which has won 96 matches in a row and is 34-0 this season, has won the last two DIII NCAA crowns. Wisconsin-Whitewater is 31-3.
We run down all the action in an all-NCAA edition of Volleyball Today, which includes the ongoing NIVC.
NCAA volleyball Saturday
The remaining second-round matches to be played on Saturday all will be streamed on the ESPN+ subscription platform. The winners advance to the round of 16: Oklahoma vs. Pittsburgh, Miami vs. Nebraska, North Carolina vs. Penn State, Northern Iowa vs. Louisville, Florida vs. Kansas, Texas A&M vs. Arizona State and Loyola Marymount vs. Stanford.
NCAA second-round matches Friday
Host Purdue (27-7) figured out the puzzle of “on two” setter Bree Borum and rolled to 25-20, 25-21, 25-12 victory over Loyola-Chicago (22-12), delighting a capacity house of 2,415 at its Holloway Gymnasium. The 10th-ranked Boilermakers shut down Borum’s early attacks, limiting her to four kills against five errors on 15 attempts, a minus .067 percentage.
The upset-minded Ramblers — who stunned Brigham Young in the first round but then failed to extend their winning streak to 14 — had the starch taken out of them in the second set….
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