NCAA volleyball season begins Tuesday: Round up the usual suspects

The Casablanca lead never gets old.

As Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains) said in the movie Casablanca after Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) shot the bad guy, “Major Strasser has been shot. Round up the usual suspects.”

And here we go again in NCAA Division I women’s volleyball.

Round up the usual suspects.

To wit, the AVCA preseason poll, the only one where most of the coaches devote a lot of thought and time to, because they’re not in season, came out last week. Don’t get us started on the poll as the season progresses…

Anyway, look at the top 10. Except for Purdue and Oregon, every team has either won an NCAA title or been to the final four the past 10 years. And Oregon went in 2012 and Purdue knocks on the door ever year.

The NCAA season begins Tuesday in Louisville, site of the NCAA Division I Women’s Volleyball Championship in late December. 

First up in the Yum! Center in the AVCA First Serve Showcase is Kentucky, which won it all in spring 2021, versus Nebraska, which, in the last seven years has one title (2017) and three other appearances in the championship match. 

Then host Louisville, which lost to ACC rival Pitt in a reverse sweep in the regional final a year ago after making it to the 2022 title match, plays Wisconsin, the 2021 champion. 

Both matches will be on ESPN2.

It’s a big-time way to begin the college volleyball season.

2024: A brave new world

This is the first season with the Big 4 instead of the Power 5 (ah, the Pac-12, rest in peace). 

Remember when it was stunning for a conference to get eight teams in the NCAA Tournament? Don’t be surprised to see 12 or more get in from the Big Ten. The ACC has eight or nine written all over it. And look for the SEC and Big 12 to get seven each, give or take. That’s more than half the field of 64. 

In the new conference alignment, there are 31 conferences. That means 27 other conferences get an automatic bid, with perhaps three or four of those getting an additional at-large or two (hello Big East, Sun Belt, Big West, WCC). 

Changing landscape? 

Just consider where the former Pac-12 teams are now. Stanford and Cal are in the ACC. The A, by the way, stands for Atlantic. Washington State and Oregon State are, at least for now, in the WCC. The Big 12 got Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah and, of course, UCLA, USC, Washington and Oregon are in the Big Ten.

Two-time…