Volleyball Today: Wilson, Arizona knock off Kansas; Utah sweeps BYU

Kansas won’t soon forget its first Big 12 trip to Arizona, but for all the wrong reasons.

Two days after getting knocked off at Arizona State, the No. 6 Jayhawks — who were 11-0 in the Big 12 before they left home —  lost in five at Arizona, which broke a four-match losing streak. Jordan Wilson had a career-high .37 kills for the Wildcats.

Sixteen other ranked teams played Friday and all won except for No. 20 USC, which fell in five at Illinois, and No. 21 BYU, which got swept at No. 23 Utah, which beat the Cougars for the first time in four years.

No. 1 Pittsburgh beat No. 25 North Carolina in the only other match with two ranked teams.

The season of the reverse sweep continues. Gardner-Webb came back from 0-2 to beat visiting UNC Asheville in the Big South.

Lines of the day: The top honor goes to Arizona’s Wilson, but Drake’s Macy Daufeldt had 32 kills in a five-set Missouri Valley victory over visiting Valparaiso. She hit .295 after taking 78 swings, and had two assists, two aces, 14 digs and two blocks. 

Tori Hester had 30 kills for Troy in its five-set Sun Belt win at Southern Miss. She had 13 digs and three blocks, two solo, as she became the school’s all-time kills leader. Hester had a career-high 33 kills the day before at Southern Miss.  

Rice’s Samarah Hill had 29 kills in a five-set American Athletic win over visiting Wichita State, hitting .329 with two assists, an ace, 16 digs and two blocks.

Saturday’s NCAA Division I volleyball slate is loaded and a look at the key matches follows.

And the AVP League is down to the playoffs, with matches Saturday to determine Sunday’s champions. Read all about it here.https://volleyballmag.com/avp-league-playoffs-prevew-110824/

NCAA volleyball Saturday

There are a handful of showcase matches on tap, including No. 3 Penn State and No. 7 Wisconsin doing quick turnarounds for a Big Ten match in Madison. Second-ranked Nebraska continues its Northwest trip at Washington, No. 12 Oregon is at No. 13 Minnesota, Ohio State and Illinois also have short recovery times when they play in Champaign, and UCLA is at Maryland. 

There are only two matches in the ACC, but that includes AVCA No. 16 Georgia Tech’s first conference trip to No. 8 Stanford and Clemson at Cal.

The Big 12 has No. 17 Baylor home for UCF, Cincinnati at Colorado and Texas Tech at Houston.

The SEC is off and so are No. 5 Creighton and Marquette in advance of their big Big East match Sunday.

No. 14 Dayton is home again for Davidson — which it swept Friday — as the Flyers go for their 19th win in a row. 

Western Kentucky also goes for its 19th in a row when it plays at Sam Houston, where it hit .389 and swept on Friday. 

Hawai’i, tied with Cal Poly and UC San Diego for second in the Big West at 9-4, is at first-place UC Davis (10-3). Cal Poly is home for CSUN and UCSD is at Cal State Fullerton.

Four teams are tied for the lead in the CAA at 11-3: Towson goes to Stony Brook, College of Charleston is at UNC Wilmington, Hofstra is home for N.C. A&T, and Delaware is at Hampton. Hampton is the last winless team in Division I at 0-26 but, incredibly, is No. 333 in the unofficial RPI. There are 13 teams below the Pirates, including 1-21 Alcorn of the SWAC, which got its victory over tiny Tougaloo of Mississippi, so the Braves are 0-20 in DI and last at No. 346 in the RPI.

Southeastern Louisiana goes for its nation-leading 22nd in a row when the Lions are home for UTRGV in the Southland Conference.

Northern Iowa goes for its 15th win in a row when it plays host to Valparaiso in the Missouri Valley Conference.

UT Arlington goes for its 14th in a row when the Mavs are home for Utah Valley in the WAC. 

And South Dakota State — which started 22-0 before losing Thursday — tries to start a new streak when the Summit League-leading Jackrabbits are home for North Dakota State.

The best of NCAA Friday

ACC: All nine ACC matches were sweeps. Performances of note include Louisville’s Anna DeBeer getting 13 kills and hitting .385 with an assist, three aces, eight digs and a solo block at Syracuse; Florida State’s Audrey Koenig had eight aces, 20 kills, hit .514, and had an assist and two blocks against Wake Forest; Miami’s Flormarie Heredia Colon had 20 kills, an ace, nine digs and a solo block against NC State; Boston College’s Julia Hagerty, the NCAA leader in blocks, had five more and nine kills while hitting .500 against Notre Dame; Pitt hit .434 against North Carolina and Oliva Babcock had 18 kills, hit .484 and had three aces and two blocks; Stanford hit .418 against Clemson as Sami Francis had 13 kills with one error in 17 swings and five blocks and Ipar Kurt had 11 kills with one error in 26 attacks; and in Georgia Tech’s win at Cal, Tamara Otene had 19 kills with one error in 35 attacks, two aces and 11 digs.

BIG TEN: There were six matches and just one was a sweep, Wisconsin over visiting Iowa as Sarah Franklin had 15 kills with no errors, two aces, seven digs and two blocks, one solo. Penn State had a 16-8 blocks advantage and won in a tough four at Northwestern. Taylor Trammel, the nation’s leader in hitting percentage, had 12 kills with no errors in 14 attacks to hit .857 to go with six blocks and Jess Mruzik had 21 kills. No. 10 Purdue won in four at Indiana as Eva Hudson had 26 kills, hit .373 and had 10 digs and five blocks, two solo; Illinois defeated visiting USC 21-25, 29-27, 25-23, 17-25, 15-12 as Raina Terry, the program record holder, had 18 more and reached 2,000 in her career. Terry had three assists, five aces, 11 digs and a block. 

Ohio State came away with a five-set victory at Michigan as Emmi Sellman had 18 kills, three aces, seven digs and a block, and Michigan State won in four at Rutgers as Akasha Anderson and Taylor Preston had 17 kills each and Rutgers dropped to 0-14 in the B1G.

BIG 12: Jordan Wilson, whose previous career high was 22, went off against Kansas with 37 kills. Arizona, which hit .347, won 25-22, 21-25, 27-29, 25-20, 15-13 as Wilson had four errors in a season-high 71 swings — the most she’d ever taken was 44 — and added an assist, a block and 12 digs. Jaelyn Hodge had 18 kills, hit .300, and had two assists, a block and 14 digs, and Charlie Cisneros had 15 kills, an assist, for blocks and 16 digs. Avery Scoggins had three kills in five errorless tries, 61 assists, a block and 20 digs. Ayah Elnady had 28 kills for Kansas, hitting .424, and added two assists, two aces, 12 digs and a block. Arizona State improved to 24-2, 12-1 in the conference, with a four-set win over visiting Kansas State and is now a game up on Kansas. Utah, which lost in five at BYU three weeks ago, routed the visiting Cougars 25-16, 25-15, 25-16 before record home crowd of 5,923. Kamryn Gibadlo led the Utes with 15 kills in 29 errorless attacks to hit .517 and had seven of her team’s 11 aces, two digs and a block. Allie Olsen had six kills with no errors in 11 attacks and five blocks, one solo. 

SEC: Four of the five matches were sweeps, including No. 16 Kentucky over Texas A&M  as Brooklyn DeLeye had 20 kills and libero Molly Tuozzo had 22 digs, three assists and an ace, and No. 22 Florida over Auburn behind 20 kills from Kennedy Martin, who had one error in 34 attacks. Oklahoma, which has gotten over the five-set-match hump, won in five at Ole Miss as Alexis Shelton led with 21 kills, an ace, five digs and two blocks, one solo. Callie Kemohah had 24 digs, four assists and an ace. Nia Washington of Ole Miss had 26 kills, hit .364, and had an assist, seven digs and two blocks, one solo. Tennessee beat visiting LSU and Arkansas beat visiting South Carolina as Olivia Ruy had 17 kills, hit .452 and had an ace, seven digs and two blocks.

AROUND THE NATION: Creighton swept Butler to improve to 22-2, 13-0 in the Big East, with its 15th win in a row. Ava Martin had 12 kills with one error in 23 attacks, an ace, two blocks and four digs. Butler hit .012 … The other ranked team in action, Dayton, gave coach Tim Horsmon his 400th victory at Dayton with an Atlantic 10 sweep of Davidson in which Lexie Almodovar had 17 kills, hit .438, and had an ace, 11 digs and three blocks, one solo … 

In the Big South, Charleston won in four over visiting High Point, which had won its first 11 league matches. High Point still has a two-game lead. Also in the Big South, in Gardner-Webb’s 23-25, 25-27, 25-17, 30-38, 15-10 win over UNC Asheville, UNCA’s Kylie Cackovic had 24 kills, three assists and 18 digs and teammate Michelle Thao had 38 digs, seven assists and an ace … 

Idle UC Davis now has a one-game Big West lead over Cal Poly, Hawai’i and UC San Diego. Cal Poly swept CSU Bakersfield and UCSD won in four at UC Irvine … 

Wright State won its seventh in a row and kept its one-game Horizon League lead over Milwaukee as the Raiders beat visiting Purdue Fort Wayne in four and Milwaukee won its sixth in a row, in five at Robert Morris as Kara Erdmann had 30 digs, seven assists and an ace. Also the HL, Liberty Torres had 24 kills in Cleveland State’s four-set win over visiting Youngstown State … Howard won 25-16, 25-23, 30-28 at Morgan State in the MEAC as the Bison improved to 19-5, 12-0 in the conference, with their 13th win in a row … In the Missouri Valley, Northern Iowa won its 14th in a row and improved to 19-7, 14-0 with a sweep of UIC. 

Also in the Valley, Ella Vogel had 13 kills with one error in 26 attacks as Murray State won in four at Evansville. She had an assist, an ace, 16 digs and six blocks, three solo. Evansville, without NCAA kills leader Giulia Cardona, lost for the season with a broken finger, got 20 kills from Angelica Gonzalez Maltes. Iva Popovic had 19 kills for Bradley in a four-set win over Missouri State as she hit .382 and had three aces, 15 digs and four blocks … 

App State has a three-game lead atop the Sun Belt East after sweeping Marshall. The day before, Old Dominion pulled a reverse sweep at James Madison. Friday JMU prevailed in five but ODU’s Bryanna Jones had 24 kills, hit .429 and had an assist, two aces, 13 digs and a block. Texas State won in five at Coastal Carolina as MJ McCurdy had 22 kills, hit .306, and added two aces, 15 digs and two solo blocks. Coastal’s Jalyn Stout had 22 kills, hit .366, and had 22 assists, 11 digs and a solo block …

Austin Peay was swept at North Alabama in the ASUN, but Sarah Carhathan had 19 kills, hit .375, and had six digs … In Binghamton’s America East sweep of UMBC Tsvetelina Ilieva had 19 kills, hit .457, and had an assist, seven digs and three blocks, one solo … In Princeton’s Ivy League sweep of Cornell, Kamryn Chaney had 18 kills, hit .395, an dhad two aces, eight digs and four blocks … In Eastern Illinois‘ five-set OVC win over visiting Little Rock, Destiny Walker had 27 kills, 16 digs and two blocks. Also in the OVC, Madolyn Isringhausen had 19 kills in a Tennessee Tech sweep of SIUE as she hit .432 and had four digs and three blocks … Florida A&M is 22-6, 14-0 in the SWAC after winning in four at Bethune-Cookman. Brooke Lynn Watts had 20 kills, two aces, 18 digs and a block … Wofford got 14 kills each from Bri Mahoney and Mary Emily Morgan in a four-set win over visiting Western Carolina as it pulled into a first-place SoCon tie with idle Mercer … In the only WCC match, Washington State beat visiting Saint Mary’s in four. Genevieve Bane had 22 kills for Saint Mary’s, hitting .429 to go with 11 digs and three blocks.