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Sunday Takeaways: Four Top-20 Teams Lost
Rice beat No. 15 Creighton and Vanderbilt beat No. 18 North Carolina, both of them unranked when they did it. Texas beat No. 6 Wisconsin in front of 10,294 at the Moody Center.
Four of the teams in the most recent AVCA top twenty lost on Sunday, and two of them lost to opponents nobody has ranked at all. One of those two was playing the seventh match of only its second season.
None of it reaches a ballot until Tuesday. The AVCA published its most recent Division I women's poll on 7 September, through games of 6 September, and avca.org gives 15 September for the next one.
No. 9 Texas beat No. 6 Wisconsin in four, Rice beat No. 15 Creighton in four, No. 18 North Carolina went out to Vanderbilt in four, and No. 14 Purdue swept No. 8 SMU in three.
The Vanderbilt match is covered on its own page here, because the team that produced it was not playing volleyball two years ago. The other three are below.
Wisconsin's One Big Hitter Was Not Enough
Texas lost the first set and won the next three, 21-25, 25-21, 25-20, 25-16, in front of 10,294 at the Moody Center. Both sides are now 4-4.
Texas hit .250, on 58 kills and 18 errors from 160 swings, and served seven aces against one. Cari Spears took 18 kills from 43 attempts, Torrey Stafford 16 from 45, Nya Bunton 13 from 25 for .480, and the whole side hit .419 in the fourth set alone.
Wisconsin hit .197, on 52 kills and 22 errors from 152 swings, and blocked six times against eight. Eva Travis took 17 kills from 38 attempts for .289, Grace Lopez nine from 22, and nobody else on the roster reached ten.
Travis hit .289, and taking her line out of the team line leaves the rest of Wisconsin at .167, on 35 kills and 16 errors from 114 swings.
As the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel counted, Wisconsin have now hit under .200 in four matches this season and have lost all four of them.
Wisconsin's Jaela Auguste played her first volleyball since 22 August in the fourth set and took four kills from seven swings.
Texas Set the Ball From Two Places
Rella Binney set 44 assists and dug 21 balls for Texas. Ella Swindle played as well, and Cari Spears was asked afterwards what it is like to be set by both of them.
Cari Spears, Texas outside hitter, to Michael Varelans of the Daily Texan.
Both of them are amazing setters, we practice with both of them. (Swindle) brings us a really good block in the front row and she gets us a really good ball up, and (Binney) runs a really good, fast offense and we run tempo from her.
Binney's 44 assists are a career high, per the Daily Texan.
Rice Hit Worse Than Creighton and Won
Rice beat No. 15 Creighton 3-1 (25-21, 37-35, 18-25, 27-25) in front of 565 at Tudor Fieldhouse, in a tournament Rice were hosting. Creighton hit .212 for the match and Rice hit .198.
The second set ran 48 minutes. Rice call it the highest-scoring set played in their building since 2012, and Creighton call it the second-highest-scoring set in their own history.
Creighton took one set and took it by seven, and lost two of the other three by two points each.
Louisville won the tournament. They took all three of their matches, and their opposite, Kalyssa Blackshear, was named its most valuable player.
Sydnee Peterson had 20 kills and 11 digs for Rice, Ashlyn Seay 14 and 13, and Kaia Mateo set 48 assists. Rice are 6-3 and Creighton are 5-4.
SMU Had Five More Kills and Lost
No. 14 Purdue swept No. 8 SMU 3-0 (30-28, 25-23, 25-22) for the Paradise Invitational title in Nassau, in front of 674 at the Baha Mar Convention Center. Every set was decided by three points or fewer.
SMU out-killed Purdue 49 to 44 and lost in three. The five extra kills cost fourteen extra swings and came with six extra errors, so Purdue hit .257 against .220 and took every set anyway.
Purdue have now beaten a top-ten team in twelve consecutive seasons, and 22 times since 2015, and they are 3-0 against SMU since last year. Purdue are 5-2 and SMU are 6-2.
Two 4-4 Teams Sit Inside the Top Nine
The ballot Tuesday's voters are revising has Wisconsin sixth and Texas ninth, and both of them are 4-4. They played each other on Sunday.
The same ballot has Colorado twenty-third at 8-0 and Pittsburgh second at 10-0, after three sweeps in three days.
Nebraska and Pittsburgh are the only unbeaten sides left in the top five, and neither of them played on Sunday.
