NCAA volleyball: Omaha wins The Summit; OVC, MVC finals set; Oregon tops USC

Omaha, which came from behind all season, pulled off a reverse sweep in The Summit League final to claim that conference’s automotic NCAA Tournament bid.

Eastern Illinois and Southeast Missouri won their semifinal matches and play for the Ohio Valley Conference title, and Northern Iowa and Drake did the same and play for the Missouri Valley Conference crown.

Coach Matt Ulmer sang the national anthem and then Oregon, No. 6 in the VolleyballMag.com Super 16, overpowered visiting AVCA No. 24 USC in the Pac-12.

The coaching carousel spun a little faster as three more openings were announced, at Air Force, East Tennessee State and Radford.

The recaps and coaching news follows, but first a look at Wednesday’s NCAA Division I women’s volleyball schedule that includes those OVC and Valley finals.

There’s a big match in the ACC when No. 15 Georgia Tech goes to No. 5 Louisville. Fourth-ranked Pittsburgh is home for Miami, NC State is at Virginia, Boston College is at Wake Forest and Clemson is at Virginia Tech.

In the SEC, first-place No. 8 Kentucky holds a one-game lead over Arkansas and Tennessee. Kentucky goes to No. 10 Arkansas and ninth-ranked Tennessee is home for Mississippi State. AVCA No. 20 Florida is home for South Carolia Alabama is at Auburn and Georgia is at LSU.

AVCA No. 22 Houston at No. 25 Baylor highlights Big 12 action, which also includes VBM No. 16 Kansas at Cincinnati, AVCA No. 15 BYU at West Virginia, UCF at Iowa State and Oklahoma at Texas Tech.

The lone Big Ten match has No. 14 Penn State at Maryland.

In the Pac-12, the match of the day has AVCA No. 18 Arizona State at VBM No. 11 Washington State. Second-ranked Stanford is home for Utah, Colorado goes to Cal, UCLA is at Oregon State and Arizona is at Washington.

The Big Sky quarterfinals get underway with four matches, and there are two quarterfinals each in the Mountain West, Big East and Big West.

And there’s a full regular-season slate in the American Athletic Conference, including conference-winner SMU at Temple. 

For the complete schedule with viewing links to every match, go to the VolleyballMag.com TV & Streaming Listings.

SUMMIT LEAGUE: Omaha, a team that started 0-9, is going to the NCAA Division I Tournament for the first time. 

The Mavericks lost the first two sets against Kansas City and then rallied for a 18-25, 20-25, 26-24, 25-12, 15-11 victory in Vermillion, South Dakota. 

Omaha (15-13) had five played with 11 or more kills and they accounted for all but one of the Maverick’s 66 kills, 18 more than Kansas City. Rachel Fairbanks had 15 kills, two assists, three blocks and 27 digs. McKenna Ruch had 15 kills, a dig and a program-record 14 blocks, two solo. Shayla McCormick had 13 kills, an assist, two blocks and 30 digs, Kali Jurgenmeister had 11 kills, six blocks and five digs, and Amanda Hardt had 11 kills, a block and a dig. The other kill was by Emily Huss, who had a dig and four blocks, three solo. Erica Fava had 21 digs, four assists and an ace.

As Omaha noted in its recap, “With 19 NCAA Division II Tournament appearances, including one national title in 1996, the Mavericks will play in the Division I Tournament for the first time ever. Omaha had previously finished as the Summit League runner-up four times.”

It means that three teams from Nebraska, also Nebraska and Creighton, will be in the NCAA tourney.

Kansas City (22-8) hit .096. Odyssey Warren led with 16 kills and 15 digs. Kaia Dunford had 13 kills, an assist, an ace, three blocks and 17 digs. Five Kangaroos had 15 or more digs, 32 by Leah Green, who had three assists and two aces. 

OHIO VALLEY: Top-seeded Eastern Illinois (27-4), the home team, plays second-seeded Southeast Missouri (22-9) for the title. 

EIU swept Southern Indiana (15-16) as Giovana Larregui Lopez had 12 kills, an assist, two aces and 14 digs. Kaitlyn Flynn added 10 kills, three digs and two blocks, and Kate Dean had 10 kills, a dig and five blocks. Natalie Mitchem had nine kills and four blocks. Catalina Rochaix had a kill, 41 assists, an ace, three blocks and six digs. Paris Downing had 11 kills and five blocks, one solo, for Southern Indiana.

Southeast Missouri grinded to a 16-25, 25-16, 21-25, 25-23, 15-13 victory over Lindenwood (16-14). Lucy Arndt led with 18 kills, four assists, three aces, 14 digs and five blocks, one solo. Marisa Guisti had 13 kills with one error in 37 swings to hit .324 and had two aces, four digs and two blocks, one solo. Izzy Lukens had seven kills with no error in 13 tries, 43 assists, a block and nine digs. Tara Beilsmith had 36 digs, three assists and an ace, and Kalia Morris had 20 digs, three assists and an ace. Beilsmith has 3,014 career digs, third all time in the NCAA.

Lindenwood’s Rebecca Janke had 17 kills with one error in 43 attacks to hit .372 and added four assists, two aces, six digs and four blocks, two solo. Nyah Wilson had 16 kills, two assists, an ace, two blocks and 29 digs. Jessie Seidel had 22 digs, five assist and four aces. Setter Allie Otten had three kills, 44 assists, a block and 13 digs.

EIU, in a conference title match for the first time since 2004, and SEMO split their two regular-season matches at Southeast Missouri in late October. EU won the first match in four and the next night Southeast Missouri won in five.

MISSOURI VALLEY: Top-seeded Northern Iowa (25-6) won its 20th match in a row and plays second-seeded Drake (22-9) for the title. 

UNI beat Southern Illlinois (20-11) for the 15th time in a row but not without some controversy. The Panthers, who won 25-17, 27-25, 25-19, appeared to lose the second set 25-23, but the official overruled the line judge on a kill to the corner that was called in. SIU challenged but replays were inconclusive. 

Kira Fallert led UNI with 18 kills and hit .457 after having two errors in 35 attacks. She added two assists, a block and four digs. Kaylissa Arndofer had nine kills and six blocks and Olivia Tjernagel had 11 kills with one error in 13 attacks and eight blocks. Erin Powers had 16 digs and seven assists and Tayer Alden had two kills, 41 assists, two blocks and 10 digs.

Nataly Garcia had 12 kills — an SIU editor alum might say 13, since it was her hit that the official called out — to lead the Salukis to go with six digs and two blocks, one solo. 

Drake beat UIC (21-12) 25-22, 25-16, 25-20 as Haley Bush had 17 kills and Macy Daufeldt 14. Bush added a block and a dig and Daufeldt, who hit .367, had an ace, a block and six digs. Jada Wills had 20 digs, three assists and an ace. UIC’s Martina Delucchi had 10 kills, an ace, three blocks and five digs.

UNI won both meetings with Drake in four sets, including last Wednesday to end the regular season.

OREGON, TCU WIN: Oregon (25-5 15-4) beat visiting USC (18-11, 12-7) to stay four games back of Stanford, while the Trojans dropped into sole possession of fifth place. Oregon coach Matt Ulmer sang the national anthem, fulfilling a promise he made if the program set a record for season tickets sold, which it did this fall. 

Morgan Lewis led the Ducks with 19 kills in the  25-14, 24-26, 25-16, 25-22 victory, hitting .486. She had four blocks and two digs. Mimi Colyer had 11 kills, an ace, 10 digs and two blocks, one solo. Hannah Pukis had a kill, 47 assists, two aces, three blocks and 15 digs, and Georgia Murphy had 15 digs, four assists and three aces. 

USC, which once again played without leading attacker Skylar Fields, hit .118. London Wijay had 11 kills and 11 digs … 

TCU of the Big 12 swept visiting Big South-champion High Point. Melanie Parra led with 14 kills, hitting .367, and had three aces, eight digs and three blocks. The Horned Frogs play BYU on Saturday desperately needing a victory to bolster their NCAA tourney at-large chances.

COACHING CAROUSEL: Air Force, which had a winning record this season and went .500 in the Mountain West, fired Keith Barnett after nine seasons — the last five as head coach. In those five years the Falcons went 54-76, 32-53 in the Mountain West. This past season, Air Force finished 17-12, 9-9. Air Force has never been to the NCAA Tournament …

ETSU fired Dr. Bruce Atkinson after just one season. His team finished 6-23 this season, 5-11 in the SoCon, losing five of its last six matches. The chiropracter had previously been the head coach at Towson, Winthrop, Dana, Texas-Brownsville (now UTRGV), Hawai’i Hilo and Delaware State. ETSU went to the NCAA Tournament three times, the last in 2018 … 

Radford’s Sherisa Livingston resigned after four seasons at the Virginia school. Radford finished 6-17 this season, 5-9 in the Big South. In four years, the team went 27-68, 20-41. Radford has been to the NCAA Tournament four times, the last in 2017.

AVCA POW: The AVCA national player of the week is Kansas graduate student Reagan Cooper. In the Jayhawks’ sweep of Baylor and four-set win over BYU she averaged 6.0 kills/set and hit .463. She also averaged .71 blocks.

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