New territory: Breaking down 2024 18-team Big Ten volleyball schedule

Two of the new members of the Big Ten conference go from the frying pan into the fire for their first Big Ten volleyball road trips.

USC and UCLA will play their respective first league road matches at Nebraska during the last week of September to kick off the 10-week conference schedule. Those two Southern California schools and two from the Pacific Northwest, Washington and Oregon, not only expanded the league to 18 teams but created a whole new set of travels situations to work out.

Second-year UCLA coach Alfee Reft said they worked with Big Ten officials to make the integration seamless and all the cross-country flights more manageable. He’s looking forward to the challenge of opening conference play in Lincoln, where Nebraska is not only the defending B1G champion but NCAA attendance leader, 

“I think opening up anywhere in the Big Ten for us is going to be exciting,” Reft said during an interview on the Big Ten Network. “Certainly, heading out to Nebraska is a real fun way for our Bruin squad this year to enter and have our inaugural match in the Big Ten.”

While the Huskers will host the West Coast teams during the first week of league play, the four other Big Ten 2023 NCAA tournament qualifiers will face off on opening night as Penn State goes to Purdue and Wisconsin plays at Minnesota.

Adding the four West Coast members created new challenges for the Big Ten in which every team will play 20 matches. All 18 teams will play the other 17 at least once.

Grace McNamara, the Big Ten’s senior director of television administration, said the conference worked with several partners, including faculty-athletic representatives, the athletic medicine cabinet and senior women’s administrators, to create the schedule.

Each team will play three others in a home-and-home series. The remaining 14 opponents were split into seven single home plays and seven away matches. McNamara said they considered travel, competitive balance and historic rivalries to determine which three teams would be double plays. The conference will reevaluate the groupings after the season and could adjust them next year.

“The opponent rotation can, in some ways, be more challenging than the schedule itself,” McNamara said. “Because so much of your outcome on the season is impacted by who you’re playing.”

Programs have long known who they would play as the Big Ten released the opponent list in February. McNamara said they wanted to…