BYU Women’s Volleyball gets a Top 10 preseason ranking
By Shaun Gordon
National coaches have taken notice of BYU Women’s Volleyball’s dominance, and the Cougars will enter the 2018 season ranked in the Top 10.
BYU Women’s Volleyball has turned into the most dominant program in Cougar Athletics. They’ve won at least a share of the West Coast Conference title four straight years. They’ve reached the Sweet Sixteen five straight times, including a run to the championship game in 2014.
And the nation is taking notice.
On Wednesday the American Volleyball Coaches Association released their Preseason Top 25 Poll, and BYU will enter the season ranked No. 8.
The AVCA poll is the primary ranking used in women’s college volleyball, and the Cougars finished last season ranked No. 7. They went 30-3, winning a share of the WCC title and making the Sweet Sixteen before falling in five sets to Kentucky.
BYU will look to be even better in 2018. Of the seven players who played at least 100 sets last season, five are back this year, including WCC Defensive Player of the Year Mary Lake, WCC co-Freshman of the year Kennedy Redding, and First Team All-WCC outside hitter Veronica Jones-Perry.
The Cougars have a balanced mix of veterans and newcomers, including incoming high school All-Amercians Whitney McEwan and Madi Robinson, and junior college All-American Riley Lyman.
They’ll be without 6’7″ sophomore Sara Hamson for part of the season, though. She underwent knee surgery this week, and her recovery time is unknown.
It’s a deep and talented roster that will look to continue the program’s streaks and make a deep run in the NCAA Tournament.
They’ll face a daunting schedule. The Cougars will face four Top 25 teams (No. 1 Stanford, No. 10 USC, No. 14 San Diego, and No. 19 Utah) and two other teams that received votes in the poll (No. 26 Marquette and No. 29 Wichita State).
BYU will play an exhibition game against Utah Valley on August 18th at 1:00pm MT in the Smith Fieldhouse, then open the season with back-to-back games at Duke on August 24th and 25th.
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The Cougars’ first regular-season home match will be on August 30th, when they’ll host Wichita State in the first game of the BYU Nike Invitational at 7:00pm MT.