The Wisconsin Badger volleyball team heads to the 2003 NCAA tournament this weekend in College Station, Texas, for its eighth consecutive and 12th overall NCAA appearance. The Badgers (21-10) will face the 21st-ranked Arizona (17-4) in the first round of play Friday.
The team is disappointed that it is not hosting first round, and it is more frustrating because Michigan State, which placed sixth in the conference standings, is hosting. Wisconsin has hosted the tournament the past three years, and this year being on the road will only fuel the Badgers’ desire to win.
“I can never predict the NCAA tournament pairings,” UW head coach Pete Waite said after the announcement. “It’s hard to understand why some people host. I actually thought we might stay and have to play against a Big Ten team — maybe Minnesota or at Illinois. But we’re traveling now; that surprises me.”
The Badgers finished off the Big Ten season in fourth place, the lowest placing for the team since 1996, when they were fifth. The Badgers are not discouraged by their ranking and are ready to show the Wildcats how Midwest volleyball is played.
The Wildcats are competing in their 19th NCAA tournament, having made the last eight in a row. Arizona finished fifth in the Pac-10 conference, which features top California teams like USC.
The team is led by 2002 AVCA National Freshman of the Year Kim Glass, a 6-foot-2 outside hitter that the Wildcats depend upon heavily. Glass, Arizona’s leader in nearly every statistical category, finished as the top player in Pac-10 play in kills per game (5.83) and points per game (6.73) and fourth in service aces per game (0.42). She finished the conference season with 385 kills on .251 hitting, 28 service aces, 202 digs and 53 total blocks. Glass was also named All Pac-10, which is the second all-conference recognition of her career, and she is just a sophomore.
“I am anxious to play against a really good player,” senior hitter Lisa Zukowski said. “We have been preparing to play her,but we have been working hard on our passing and just playing well. We are doing a lot of fundamentals.”
“We have been preparing for her in practice. We have been practicing right-side blocking, left-side digging, just preparing for anything,” setter Morgan Shields said. “I think if we can hold Kim down we have a really good chance of winning first round.”
Classmates Bre Ladd and Jennifer Abernathy were also both recognized by the conference coaches with honorable mention all-conference honors. Ladd led all Arizona players with a .329 hitting percentage against conference competition and finished with a 1.08 blocks-per-game average. Abernathy was second only to Glass on the Arizona roster in kills against Pac-10 teams, finishing with 223 (3.54 kills per game). The Badgers will have to contain all of the Wildcats’ top hitters.
Both the Pac-10 and the Big Ten are strong volleyball conferences, but the style of play is different. The Badgers have come to the point in the season where they are playing consistently.
Wisconsin will also head into the game with nothing to lose, and it has the advantage of being an older, more-experienced team than the young Wildcats.
“We want to see how they react under pressure and, if anything, they should be intimidated by us,” Zukowski said. “The seniors on this team have played a lot of different teams outside the conference, and we have been to the tournament before. I think that is a major advantage that we have.”
With that, the Badgers head to Texas in hopes of continuing their run and showing all the other conferences how good Big Ten volleyball is.
“As a whole, we have absolutely nothing to lose. So, it is going to be all out, everything we got, enjoy what we have left, and just play as hard as we can,” Shields said. “In a way, it is going to be a fun run either way.”
If the Badgers win Friday night, they will play either Texas A&M (21-9) or Nicholls State (18-4) for the second round of play.
