ASU volleyball just wrapped up its second historical regular season in a row under head coach JJ Van Niel. Boasting a 29-2 record and a Big 12 conference title, the Sun Devils aren't finished just yet.
On Sunday, the NCAA announced its 2024 tournament bracket for NCAA Women's Volleyball. The Sun Devils have the honor of hosting the first round, earning a No. 3 seed in the "Nebraska quadrant."
This quadrant is quite tough, with No. 2 seed Wisconsin looming in the third round and both teams ASU lost to in the regular season, Nebraska and Baylor, as possible opponents in the quarter-finals. Even with these big matchups around the corner, the Sun Devils are taking it one game at a time.
"Every team comes with its own challenges," graduate middle blocker Savannah Kjolhede said in an interview with WCSN. "So moving forward, it'll be just one team at a time."
On Friday at 6:30 p.m., ASU will play America East conference champions New Hampshire. The Wildcats finished the regular season 18-9, defeating the University of Albany in the conference tournament final 3-1 to punch their ticket in the NCAA tournament.
New Hampshire is led by graduate outside hitter Hannah Serbousek who has 271 kills and 302 digs on the season. She also has 26 aces and leads the team with a serve reception rate of 0.951 with a minimum of 100 attempts. Serbousek was also America East First Team All-Conference in 2023. Alongside her is graduate middle blocker Kelly Kaufmann. Kaufmann has 135 total blocks this season along with a 0.345 hitting percentage.
The winner of that game will face the winner of No. 6 seed Texas A&M and Colorado State, on Saturday at 6 p.m. All of these first two round games will be played in Tempe at Desert Financial Arena.
Texas A&M finished the season 19-7 including wins over Baylor and Texas. The Aggies are led by junior Logan Lednicky, who has 419 kills on the season. Colorado State went 20-10 this season, defeating San Jose State to clinch its spot in the tournament. The Rams are led by redshirt senior opposite hitter Malaya Jones with 541 kills and 32 aces this season.
Last season ASU made the third round of the tournament before falling to top-seeded Stanford. Going into this year they wanted to do even better.
"Our goal is to go further than we did last year, and our goal will continue to be that," graduate middle blocker Claire Jeter said.
Graduate libero Mary Shroll and the team have had high expectations for themselves all season. They knew as a team this year would be a great year.
"We always knew we wanted to achieve big things," Shroll said. "That was never a doubt in our mind."
Edited by Henry Smardo, Abigail Beck and Madeline Schmitke.
Reach the reporter at aldeutsc@asu.edu and follow @AlanDeutschend3 on X.
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Alan is a sophomore studying sports journalism. This is his second semester with The State Press. He has also worked at Blaze Radio.
