Penn St. knocks off Wisconsin; first NCAA bid claimed by Pepperdine
Pepperdine celebrates beating San Diego and clinching the 2023 WCC ttle
Penn State, ranked No. 19 in the AVCA, upset VolleyballMag.com Super 16 No. 2 Wisconsin on Saturday in a stunning result in the Big Ten.
TCU won again at AVCA No. 20 Baylor, this time in a reverse sweep in the Big 12.
VBM No. 6 Oregon barely got out of Cal with a five-set victory in the Pac-12.
Pepperdine claimed the first NCAA Tournament automatic bid when it beat San Diego and won the West Coast Conference.
More conference regular-season titles were clinched.
The recaps and top performances follow, but first a look at Sunday’s NCAA Division I women’s volleyball schedule.
There are four ACC matches, including No. 5 Louisville home for North Carolina. Florida State, tied with Louisville and idle Pittsburgh for first, is home for Miami. NC State plays at Virginia Tech and Notre Dame is at Virginia.
Most of the six-match Big Ten action involves the bottom two-thirds of the standings. Top-ranked and unbeaten Nebraska is home for Illinois and AVCA No. 16 Purdue is home for Michigan State. Minnesota is at Indiana, Ohio State is at Maryland, Northwestern is at Iowa and Michigan is at Rutgers.
The stakes are high in the two Pac-12 matches at No. 9 Washington State (RPI 16) tries to right the ship against visiting AVCA No. 25 USC (RPI 22) and UCLA (RPI 41) goes to Washington (RPI 49).
In the SEC, No. 10 Tennessee plays host to Ole Miss and No. 11 Kentucky entertains Georgia. AVCA No. 21 Florida is at Alabama, AVCA No. 24 Auburn is at Missouri and LSU is at South Carolina. Auburn is No. 29 in the RPI and Missouri is 30th.
Towson, which leads Delaware by a game heading into the last match of the regular season, is at Northeastern, while the Blue Hens are at Elon.
Could this be the day? The CAA’s Hampton, 0-19, which lost to Charleston on Saturday, plays host to the Cougars again. And Saint Peter’s, 0-29 after losing to Fairfield on Saturday, is home for Quinnipiac in the MAAC.
Want to watch? We have the conference-by-conference schedule with viewing links for any match that is being shown in our VolleyballMag.com TV & Streaming Listings.
PENN STATE STUNNER: In the only Big Ten match, Penn State (17-8, 11-5) came away with a 23-25, 29-27, 25-23, 25-18 victory over visiting Wisconsin (23-2, 14-2. Wisconsin had only lost four sets — including a loss to Nebraska — this Big Ten season. The Badgers hit a season-low .176 as they played again without 6-9 Anna Smrek.
Camryn Hannah led Penn State with 19 kills as she hit .375 and had an ace and four digs. Jess Mruzik had 16 kills, two blocks and 16 digs. Zoe Weatherington had 10 kills and two blocks and Taylor Trammel had nine kills with one error in 14 attacks and four blocks, one solo. Mac Podraza had two kills, 51 assists, four blocks and 13 digs. Her team hit .238.
Sarah Franklin led Wisconsin with 19 kills, two assists, three blocks and 12 digs. Julia Orzol, moved from libero to outside hitter again in Smrek’s absence, had 11 kills, an ace, six digs and four blocks, one solo.
PAC-12: Cal gave Oregon all it could handle before visiting Beavers came away with a 23-25, 25-12, 20-25, 25-15, 15-13 victory. It kept Oregon tied with Arizona State and idle USC at three games back of Stanford in the loss column. Kara McGhee had 18 kills and hit .452 to go with two digs and seven blocks. Morgan Lewis and Gabby Gonzales had 14 kills each. Hannah Pukis had four kills, 42 assists, an ace, 13 digs and six blocks. Colby Neal had three kills and nine blocks
Cal dropped into 11th, a game behind Utah and a game ahead of last-place Arizona. The Bears were down 8-3 in the fifth before tying it 13-13. Maggie Li led with 15 kills. Cal was hitting only .046 when up 2-1 and finished hitting .078 …
Arizona State swept visiting Utah as Marta Levinska had 21 kills, hit .405 and had an assist, two aces, six digs and three blocks, two solo … Stanford beat visiting Oregon State in four as Caitie Baird and Kendall Kipp had 13 kills each. Kipp had six blocks, Baiird five and McKenna Vicini 10. Viciini had eight kills with no errors in 15 attacks and Sami Francis had nine kills with one error in 12 swings. Peyton Suess had 15 kills for OSU and Mychael Vernon 14 … Arizona beat visiting Colorado in five as Arizona’s Sofia Maldonado Diaz had 27 kills, hitting .543, and CU’s Maya Tabron had 26 kills, hitting .438.
BIG 12: TCU did it again, this time in five at Baylor, knocking Baylor down to No. 34 in the RPI while keeping its own NCAA tourney hopes alive with a jump to 51. TCU won 20-25, 14-25, 25-22, 26-24, 16-14. TCU, which hit .164, got 16 kils from Melanie Parra, who had an assist, an ace, 14 digs and four blocks. Audrey Nalls had 16 kills, eight digs and three blocks, and Jalyn Gibson had 14 kills, an ace and 11 digs. Baylor’s Elise McGhee had 22 kills, Manuela Bibinbe had 16 and Allie Sczech 15 … No. 4 and conference-leading Texas swept at Cincinnati as the Longhorns hit a season-high 476. Madisen Skinner had 13 kills with one error in 19 attacks. Asjia O’Neal had nine kills with one error in 14 attacks and eight blocks. She passed Chiaka Ogbogu as the all-time Texas blocks leader … No. 14 Kansas bounced back at Iowa State, winning in five behind 25 kills from Ayah Elnady.
Erin Jones of St. John’s hits over the Creighton block of Kiara Reinhardt/St. John’s photo
BIG EAST: Creighton and Marquette stayed tied for the lead. No. 15 Creighton won in four at St. John’s as Ava Martin had 18 kills, hitting .406, to go with an ace, three blocks. and six digs. Norah Sis had 14 kills, an ace, a block and eight digs. Lucrezia Lodi had 19 kills for St. John’s to go with two aces and four blocks, one solo … Marquette won in four at Villanova as Jenna Reitsma had 18 kills, hitting .432, with two assists, three aces, 11 digs and two blocks, one solo … In Xavier’s sweep of Providence, Anna Taylor had 12 kills in 20 errorless attacks … DePaul won in four at Georgetown as Jill Pressly had 19 kills, an assist, three aces, six digs and a solo block.
Around the nation
Pepperdine beat visiting San Diego 25-19, 25-22, 25-17 to win the West Coast Conference title and automatic NCAA Tournament bid that goes with it. Grace Chillingsworth had 16 kills and nine digs …
AVCA No. 18 Dayton finished the Atlantic 10 regular season with its 25th win in a row as the Flyers (29-2, 18-0) swept VCU. Lexie Almodovar had 15 kills, an assist, two aces, six digs and two blocks. Also in the A10, Saint Louis beat George Washington in five, but GWU’s Salem Yohannes had 24 kills, hit .477, and had seven digs …
Fairfield swept the aforementioned Saint Peters and won the MAAC regular-season title for the fifth year in a row. It’s also Fairfield’s 22nd regular-season title since 1996. Quinnipiac fell two games back when it was knocked off by Rider in five. Also in the MAAC, Iona beat Canisius in five as Hope Matschner had 32 digs and 10 assists. Marist swept Siena and Sasha van der Merwe had 21 kills, an ace and eight digs in just three sets … Sacred Heart and Fairleigh Dickinson to stay tied atop the NEC …
The ASUN finished with a surprise as league-leading FGCU got swept at Jacksonville … In the Big Sky, Weber State fell out of a first-place tie in the loss column with idle Sacramento State when it lost in five to Montana State. MSU’s Kira Thomsen had 20 kills … Also in the Big Sky, Hanah Stoddard had 15 kills in 26 errorless swings as Northern Arizona swept at Idaho …
High Point wins the 2023 Big South regular-season title/Tim Cowie Photography
High Point finished the Big South regular-season 21-5, 14-0 with a four-set win over Radford for its sixth conference title in seven years. Dylan Maberry had 19 kills, hit .359, and had three aces, two blocks and 11 digs … UC Santa Barbara protected its Big West lead with a five-set win over visiting UC San Diego as Tasia Farmer had 21 kills … Conference-leading Wright State closed the Horizon League regular season with its seventh win in a row, a sweep at IUPUI as Sam Ott had 12 kills with one error in 29 attacks, two blocks and six digs … Also in the Horizon, second-place Green Bay won in five over visiting Cleveland State as Tiffany Paalman had 23 kills, hit .364 and had a dig and three blocks … Northern Kentucky got 25 kills from Joy Banks in a four-set win at Purdue Fort Wayne, which got 21 kills from Panna Ratkai … Western Michigan won its 17th in a row to improve to 27-2, 17-0 in the MAC by sweeping Toledo. Maggie King had 15 kills … Missouri Valley-leading Northern Iowa won in four at Valparaiso as Olivia Tjernagel had 12 kills with one error in 31 attacks … Also in the Valley, Giula Cardona had 26 kills for Evansville in a four-set win over Murray State. She had an assist, five aces, six digs and two blocks … The Ohio Valley leaders both lost as Eastern Illinois fell in five at SIUE and second-place Southeast Missouri got swept at Tennessee Tech. EIU lost on the road in the conference for the first time this season … Omaha swept South Dakota State to keep its one-game Summit League over Denver, South Dakota and Kansas City … Arkansas State won its Sun Belt match with Marshall in five and Katilin Whitlock had 26 kills, 14 digs and a block … SFA (27-3) improved to 16-0 in the WAC with a sweep at California Baptist … Utah Tech lost in five at Utah Valley but Kennedi Knudsen had 25 kills, hitting .400, to go with an ace, 12 digs and five blocks.
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