Volleyball Today: USC reverse sweeps Oregon; UCLA’s Boyd, Perez win in beach
Our version of March Madness has begun.
It’s now one and done for quite a few conferences. For that matter, other than the ACC, Big East, Big 12, Big Ten and SEC, very few leagues are likely to get more than one team in the 64-team NCAA Tournament.
Look for a breakdown on Tuesday of every conference that starts a tournament this week.
This edition of Volleyball Today also includes a recap of the AVCA Beach Volleyball National Championships in Huntsville, Alabama.
But first a quick look at what happened Sunday, including a reverse sweep by No. 23 USC against visiting No. 11 Oregon in the Big Ten and a big sweep by No. 9 SMU over visiting No. 22 Florida State in the ACC.
Lines of the day: Nia Washington had 32 kills for Ole Miss in a five-set SEC victory over visiting Mississippi State, hitting .388 to go with two assists, two aces and a solo block.
Kentucky’s Brooklyn DeLeye went off for program-record 30 kills in a four-set match as the Wildcats beat visiting Georgia in the SEC. She hit .377 to go with eight digs.
Reverse sweeps: In addition to USC, there was a huge one in the MAAC as Canisius ralled at Siena for a victory that gave the Golden Griffins the No. 4 seed and first-round bye in this week’s conference tourney. Libero Jillian Hanna made her coach father Tom happy with 28 digs, five assists and four aces.
And that’s a wrap on 2024 for Hampton, which finished 0-30 when the Pirates were swept at William & Mary in the CAA. Hampton lost its last 21 in 2023 and will enter 2025 on a 51-match losing streak.
There are two matches Monday, both in the SWAC, when Grambling plays Texas Southern and Southern faces Alabama State.
Later Monday, our VolleyballMag Super 16 Media Poll and then 900 Square Feet, the weekly Zoom with Emily Ehman and yours truly and we’ll be joined by Creighton coach Kirsten Bernthal Booth.
NCAA volleyball Sunday
Start with the ACC, where there were six matches and all but one resulted in a sweep. No. 1 Pittsburgh swept visiting Miami as Olivia Babcock had 20 kills, hit .531, and had an assist, all of the Panthers five aces, three digs and three blocks. Third-ranked Louisville swept visiting North Carolina as Anna DeBeer had 14 kills with one error in 28 attacks to hit .464 to go with an ace, four digs and four blocks. SMU swept visiting FSU as Naya Shime had 11 kills, hit .381 and had an ace four blocks. No. 16 Georgia Tech swept visiting Boston College, Notre Dame held off Duke in four and Clemson swept visiting Syracuse.
Pitt and Louisville remain tied for the lead at 15-1, while Stanford and Georgia Tech are tied for third at 13-3 …
The big result in the Big Ten was USC’s 20-25, 16-25, 25-22, 25-23, 16-14 victory over visiting Oregon. USC, which hit just .185, got 18 kills from Ally Batenhorst, who had 10 errors, two assists, an ace, 10 digs and two blocks, one solo. Adonia Faumuina had 17 kills and also 10 errors, six digs and two blocks. Mimi Colyer led Oregon with 23 kills, hitting .315, and she had two aces, 13 digs and seven blocks. USC is 5-2 in five-set matches this season. Tenth-ranked Purdue swept visiting Illinois as Eva Hudson had 18 kills, hit .333, and had seven digs and two blocks, one solo. Raina Terry had 18 kills for Illinois to go with an assist, seven digs and a block. Third-ranked Penn State won in four at Maryland as Camryn Hannah had 17 kills, hit .500, and had six digs. Izzy Starck. had four kills with one error in five attempts, 49 assists, two aces, 17 digs and three blocks. No. 16 Minnesota beat visiting Michigan in four as Julia Hanson had a season-high 24 kills, hitting .400, to go with eight digs and four blocks. Washington swept visiting Northwestern and Michigan State swept at Iowa, which had 26 kills but 28 errors.
Nebraska leads the B1G at 16-0, Penn State is a game back at 15-1, followed by Wisconsin (14-2) and Purdue (13-3). Oregon dropped six games back at 11-5 …
The SEC’s No. 14 Kentucky beat visiting Georgia in four and Brooklyn DeLeye, as noted had 30 kills. Asia Thigpen had 11 kills, an assist, 16 digs and two blocks. No. 13 Texas swept at Alabama as as Madi Skinner had 14 kills, hit .314, and had 10 digs and two blocks, one solo. LSU hit .400 and played its best match of the season, sweeping visiting Arkansas 25-15, 25-14, 25-17. Angelina Lee had nine kills with no errors in 12 attacks and two blocks, one solo. And Ole Miss defeated visiting Mississippi State in five as Nia Washington tied the school record for kills with 32. Cammy Nielsen had 20 digs, eight assists and an ace.
Kentucky leads the SEC at 11-2, a game ahead of Florida and Texas, both at 10-3. Missouri is a half-game behind them at 9-3 …
The only other ranked team in action Sunday was Creighton, which hit .548 as it improved to 25-2, 16-0 in the Big East. The Bluejay won their 18th in a row, a sweep of visiting Georgetown, which hit .063. Creighton, which clinched its 11th Big East regular-season title in a row, finishes the regular season next weekend at DePaul and Xavier. Norah Sis had 15 kills with one error to hit .636 against Georgetown to go with two assists, two aces, eight digs and a block …
Of note around the nation: In the only Big West match, UC Davis swept visiting CSU Bakersfield to climb into a three-way tie with Cal Poly and Hawai’i. Olivia Utterback had 18 kills for UC Davis, hitting .301 with an assist, two aces and 10 digs … In the only Big 12 match, Arizona swept at West Virginia … South Florida won the American Athletic and the tourney top seed after the Bulls (14-2) swept visiting UAB and Rice (13-3) lost in five at North Texas. USF’s Maria Clara Andrade led USF with 17 kills and hit .533 after having one error in 30 attacks to go with two assists, an ace, 12 digs and a block. Rice plays UNT again to open the league tourney.
AVCA Beach Volleyball National Championships
Larry Hamel reporting:
Junior Maggie Boyd and sensational freshman Sally Perez of UCLA pulled a stunning “silly season” upset on Sunday that might have long-term implications.
Boyd and Perez dispatched battle-hardened TCU standouts Daniela Alvarez and Tanai Moreno with businesslike precision 21-16, 21-17 in the title match of the AVCA Beach Volleyball National Championships in Huntsville, Alabama.
The fall AVCA tournament was a top-level pairs competition that brought together 64 duos that had qualified through regional events. The 2025 NCAA-sanctioned dual-meet season starts in late February.
Considered the premier pair in collegiate beach volleyball, Alvarez and Moreno returned to the powerhouse Horned Frogs program after a year’s absence following a fifth-place finish in the Paris Olympics, representing their native Spain. They were the AVCA National Pair of the Year in 2023.
But Alvarez-Moreno never could find a rhythm against Boyd’s potent and accurate topspin jump serve, while the rangy 6-foot-3 Perez was a confounding presence at the net.
The UCLA duo got off to a roaring start, opening a 10-4 cushion in the first set and Alvarez-Moreno could get no closer than four points. The TCU veterans took a 10-9 lead in the second set, but that was short-lived. A tape-snake on-two option by Alvarez knotted the count at 12 before Boyd’s diving ace to the sideline put the Bruins up 14-12.
Crunch time belonged to Boyd and Perez. A hitting error by Alvarez and Perez’s stuff block against Moreno built an 18-14 advantage and the UCLA pair sided out from there.
Moreno and Alvarez “are an amazing team and we knew this would be a hard fight,” said Boyd, a two-time AVCA first-team All-American who went 33-7 last season for the Bruins’ NCAA runner-up squad, playing on the No. 1 court with the departed Lexy Denaberg. “We knew we had to serve aggressively to get them out of system, and we executed that really well.”
Boyd-Perez swept Cal Poly’s Piper Ferch and Erin Inskeep in the semifinals. Alvarez-Moreno had not dropped a set in their previous six matches and advanced to the gold-medal match by bouncing Brooke Rockwell and Ruby Sorra of Stanford.
The victory by Boyd and Perez earned their UCLA program an entry into the main draw of a future Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour Challenge event. The Bruins can choose which team they send to the second-tier tour stop.
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