International Volleyball

Volleyball Today: Six conference tourneys begin; Wisconsin, TCU win; SEMO, UNI take titles

Volleyball Today: Six conference tourneys begin; Wisconsin, TCU win; SEMO, UNI take titles

Auburn’s Madison Scheer, left, and Chelsey McCurdy with the block against Florida’s Kennedy Martin/Auburn photo

It’s tourney time!

Conference championships begin Thursday in the ASUN, CAA, MAAC, SoCon, Sun Belt and WAC. All of those are one-and-done leagues, meaning only the conference-tournament winner will get a bid to the 64-team NCAA Tournament bracket.

There was big-time regular-season drama Wednesday as No. 6 Wisconsin had to go to overtime to hold off visiting No. 17 Minnesota and No. 22 TCU pulled off a reverse sweep over visiting Houston. 

Southeast Missouri State won the Ohio Valley Conference regular-season title and Northern Iowa did the same in the Missouri Valley Conference.

The line of the day: Florida’s Kennedy Martin had 31 more kills as the sophomore right side hit .333 and had an ace, 10 digs and four blocks in a four-set SEC win at Auburn.

The coaching carousel spun again, picking up speed as three NCAA Division I teams are looking for coaches.

LOVB has to love this: League One Volleyball, which starts it first pro season in January, has $100 million in committed new funding.

And there’s more pro beach volleyball, this time in India.

It’s all in this edition of Volleyball Today:

NCAA volleyball Thursday

First the regular-season matches of note. 

There’s a big one in the Big Ten when No. 5 Penn State plays host to No. 10 Purdue. No. 14 Oregon goes to Michigan State, No. 21 USC is at Northwestern and Maryland is at Michigan. 

In the Big 12, No. 8 Arizona State is home for Iowa State, No. 16 Utah is home for West Virginia, No. 24 BYU is home for Cincinnati and Arizona is at Colorado.

Northern Colorado, which holds a two-game lead over Sacramento State and Weber State in the Bg Sky, is home for Idaho. Sacramento State is home for Idaho State and Weber State goes to Portland State.

Cal Poly, UC Davis and idle Hawai’i are 12-4 atop the Big West. Cal Poly goes to UC Riverside and UC Davis is home for UC Santa Barbara.

In the Mountain West, where only the top six teams make the conference tournament, Colorado State holds a one-game lead in the loss column over idle Fresno State and a one-game lead over Utah State. CSU is home for Nevada and Utah State goes to Wyoming. Fourth-place San Jose State has already won its match at sixth-place Boise State, since Boise State is forfeiting. Fifth-place San Diego State is home for New Mexico. 

Loyola Marymount, up by two games in the West Coast Conference over San Diego and Pepperdine, is at…

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