Huskies Earn Top Seed In Region, Host On Friday
November 30, 2014 | Volleyball
NCAA First & Second Rounds
Alaska Airlines Arena
Friday, December 5
Hawaii vs. Duke, 5:00 p.m.
(3) Washington vs. New Hampshire, 7:00 p.m.
Saturday, December 6
Winner Match 1 vs. Winner Match 2, 7:00 p.m.
SEATTLE – For the second straight season, the Husky volleyball team was rewarded for its stellar regular season with one of the four top seeds in the NCAA Division I Volleyball Championships. As announced on ESPNU this evening, Washington is the No. 3 overall seed in the 64-team field, matching the program's best seeding ever, and will host the first and second rounds this Friday and Saturday at Alaska Airlines Arena.
The Huskies are the top seed in the Seattle Region, as Washington was selected as one of the four regional hosts prior to the season. The four Regional sites are Seattle, Ames, Iowa, Minneapolis, and Louisville, Kentucky. Stanford earned the No. 1 overall seed and are in the Ames Region. Texas was No. 2 overall and assigned to Minneapolis. The No. 4 seed went to Wisconsin, which heads the Louisville Region.
The 16 seeded teams will all host first and second rounds on their campuses with the winner of each four-team grouping moving on to the Regional sites.
Coming to Seattle for the first two rounds this week are New Hampshire, Hawaii, and Duke. The Huskies will play New Hampshire, the America East Conference champions, on Friday, Dec. 5, at 7:00 p.m. Pacific time. Prior to that match, Hawaii and Duke will face off at 5:00 p.m. The winners of those matches will meet on Saturday, Dec. 6, at 7:00 p.m. in the second round.
“We're playing well, and that's the most important thing, that we're playing well and we're rested,” said Head Coach Jim McLaughlin. “Having experienced the NCAA tournament here in the past, it's unreal, and it's something I want our girls to just cherish and hang on to and really have fun with. Our crowd will be into it, and they will be loud, and I hope they make it tough on the opponents. It will be a fun atmosphere.”
McLaughlin has now led the Huskies to 13 consecutive NCAA tournaments, the eighth-longest current streak in the nation. The No. 3 overall seed matches Washington's all-time best, as the Huskies were also seeded third in 2005 and 2013. The Huskies won the NCAA title in 2005 and made the Final Four last season as the third seed. The Dawgs will be looking for a fifth Final Four under McLaughlin, which would take them to Oklahoma City.
The Huskies head into the tournament with a 29-2 record, the most wins ever for the team in the regular season. The Huskies finished second in the Pac-12 with an 18-2 record, and this evening watched as a conference-record 10 teams made it into the field. Along with No. 1 Stanford and No. 3 Washington, three more Pac-12 teams were seeded: No. 10 Oregon, No. 11 Arizona, and No. 12 UCLA. Also earning bids out of the Pac-12 are Arizona State, Colorado, Oregon State, USC, and Utah. The Pac-12's 10 bids was well ahead of the next-best conference, the Big Ten, with six bids. The Big 12 and SEC each put five teams in the field.
Washington has played 11 of the teams in the field this season, including the nine Pac-12 squads and No. 4 seed Wisconsin and BYU. The Huskies own a record of 17-2 against those 11 teams, their only losses on the year coming in five sets at Colorado and Utah. The Huskies are the only team to defeat No. 1 Stanford this season, coming just this past Wednesday in front of a record 8,646 fans, and the Huskies gave the fourth-seeded Badgers one of their two losses back on Sept. 19 in a five-set thriller.
