There were two matches involving ranked teams Wednesday in NCAA Division I volleyball, as Kansas and Baylor came away with Big 12 victories.
The line of the day: South Carolina’s Riley Whitesides had 30 kills in a five-set SEC win at LSU, hitting .364 with an assist,13 digs and five blocks, one solo.
Things are escalating, and not in a good way, off the court around the situation involving San Jose State and the Mountain West Conference.
It’s all in this NCAA edition of Volleyball Today:
NCAA volleyball Thursday
The match of the day is in the Big Ten when No. 2 Nebraska, which has won 21 in a row, is home for No. 16 Minnesota. Sixth-ranked Wisconsin is at No. 23 USC, No. 10 Purdue is home for Rutgers and Indiana goes to Iowa.
There are two ACC matches as No. 7 Stanford plays host to Virginia and Virginia Tech goes to Cal.
The Big 12 slate shows No. 8 Arizona State home for West Virginia, No. 20 Utah goes to Houston, No. 24 BYU is at UCF and Arizona is at Cincinnati.
Among the other matches, there’s a big one in the Ohio Valley as league-leading Southeast Missouri (15-11, 12-2) goes to second-place Lindenwood (17-9, 11-3). Madolyn Isringhausen of the OVC’s Tennessee Tech is this week’s AVCA national player of the week.
Western Kentucky, which has won 19 in a row, is home for Liberty in Conference USA; Southeastern Louisiana, which has won a nation-best 22 in a row and clinched the Southland Conference regular-season title, plays at East Texas A&M, which last week changed its name from Texas A&M-Commerce; UT Arlington, which has won 15 in a row and already clinched the WAC, goes to Southern Utah.
NCAA volleyball Tuesday, Wednesday
WEDNESDAY: The match of the day was the four-set victory by No. 12 Kansas over visiting No. 18 TCU. Ayah Elnady led the Jayhawks with 18 kills in the 25-20, 25-21, 15-25 25-17 victory to go with 15 digs and four blocks. Caroline Bien added 14 kills, two assists and 18 digs, and Toyosi Onabanjo had 12 kills, hit .409, and had two digs and five blocks, one solo. TCU’s Jalyn Gibson had 19 kills, an assist, 18 digs and a block. Also in the Big 12, No 17 Baylor swept at Kansas State and Colorado won in four at Iowa State …
In the only Big Ten match, UCLA pulled off a surprising sweep of visiting Washington, which hit .164. Cheridyn Leverette led UCLA with 13 kills …
NC State swept visiting Wake Forest in the only ACC match as Courtney Bryant had 10 kills with one error in 29 attacks, an ace, six digs and three blocks, one solo …
There were two SEC matches. Texas A&M hit .444 and had an impressive sweep at Oklahoma as Logan Lednicky led with 12 kills, hitting .381, to go with an assist, five digs and three blocks. OU’s Alexis Shelton had 14 kills, an assist, four digs and two blocks. South Carolina won in five at LSU and in addtion to the 30 kills from Whitesides, Campbell Paris had 15 kills, hit .333, and had a dig and a block and Victoria Harris had 27 digs, two assists and an ace. …
In East Carolina’s American Athletic sweep of Charlotte, Angeles Alderete had nine kills, hit .304, and had an assist, three aces and nine digs … Queens swept West Georgia in the ASUN and Kayla McDuff had 13 kills with one error in 22 attacks to hit .545 and had three digs and four blocks, two solo … Binghamton of the America East won in five at Lehigh of the Patriot League as Tsvetelina Ilieva had 22 kills and four blocks in the America East victory … In the only Big East match, St. John’s won in four at Villanova as Lucrezia Lodi had 19 kills, Erin Jones had 18 and 17 digs, and Giorgia Walther had 15 kills … In the two West Conference matches, Washington State swept at Gonzaga as Katy Ryan had 13 kills with no errors in 18 swings to hit .722, and in the reverse sweep of the day, Pacific beat visiting Oregon State 14-25, 22-25, 25-16, 25-21, 15-12. Alexa Edwards led with 24 kills, two assists, nine digs and a block.
TUESDAY: There were five matches Tuesday, including a four-set Big West victory for Long Beach State (16-9, 10-5) over visiting UC San Diego (16-10, 10-5). Both trail Cal Poly, Hawai’i and UC Davis, which are all 10-4. Four Beach players had nine or more kills, 11 for Madi Maxwell, who had three aces, eight digs and a block …
USC Upstate beat UNC Asheville in five in the Big South … In the SoCon, Chattanooga won in four at Furman, which got 23 kills from Chandler Parker. Chattanooga’s Chard’e Vazandt had 18 kills, hit .410, and had three digs and a block … New Mexico beat visiting Air Force in four in the Mountain West … and Ball State swept visiting Miami in the MAC as Madison Buckley, Aniya Kennedy and Carson Tyler had 10 kills each. Buckley hit .533 and had five blocks and Kennedy had one error in 15 attacks to hit .600.
More Mountain West madness
This is best summarized by D1.Ticker:
A dozen volleyball student-athletes along with San Jose State AC Melissa Batie-Smoose have filed a lawsuit against the Mountain West, Commissioner Gloria Nevarez, the Cal State Board of Trustees and SJSU President Cynthia Teniente-Matson, among others. The suit also requests emergency injunctive relief in advance of the conference tournament, which starts November 27, and alleges violations of Title IX and First and 14th Amendment rights stemming from SJSU allegedly having a transgender player on its roster.
From the suit: “Recently, the MWC, SJSU, and the other Defendants have collectively manipulated MWC rules, diminished sport opportunities for women, spread inaccurate information, used their positions to chill and suppress speech with which they disagree, and punished dozens of female collegiate volleyball student-athletes for taking a public stand for their right to compete in a separate sports category, all in a concerted effort to stamp out debate over women’s rights in sport.” The suit goes on to argue the SJSU player in question should be ineligible to play in the tournament and the Spartans transporting that player to the conference tournament is a violation of Title IX. “Review of the existing MWC policies, which do not set forth a clear policy or practice of imposing losses upon teams which choose not to play for safety reasons, also supports the conclusion the MWC TPP (Transgender Participation Policy) was specifically adopted to chill protests and other expressive conduct, including boycotts, on a women’s rights issue.”
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