NAIA VOLLEYBALL CHAMPIONSHIPS OPENING ROUND
Lithia Motors Pavilion | Ashland, Oregon
3 p.m. Saturday – Loyola (La.) (26-6) at No. 12 SOU (26-6)
STREAM | LIVE STATS | TICKETS
*Season ticket passes not valid for NAIA postseason contests

ASHLAND – In need of one home victory to reserve a spot at the NAIA Volleyball Championships final site, No. 12-ranked Southern Oregon finds itself in a favorable and familiar position.

The Loyola (La.) Wolf Pack will make the trip from New Orleans to Lithia Motors Pavilion for Saturday's 3 p.m. Opening Round match in uncharted territory – at least for anyone associated with the team over the last couple decades. The Southern States Athletic Conference representatives are part of the national postseason for the first time in 21 years, a stretch in which the Raiders have been in the field 11 times. SOU is 3-0 in Opening Round matches since 2014, all at home, and seeking its fourth final site appearance in five seasons.

But that is mere historical trivia for two teams with a lot in common, at least on paper. They both stand at 26-6 and are playing their best volleyball of the season, with SOU winning 11 of its last 12 matches and Loyola 15 of its last 17; they both feature All-America candidates in the middle, the marquee matchup comprising SOU's Sadie Byrd and Loyola's Amaya Bazemore; and they both landed on near-identical numbers in attacking average (SOU – .251, Loyola – .252), opponents' attacking average (SOU – .139, Loyola – .117) and blocks per set (SOU – 2.6, Loyola – 2.3).

PLAYOFF PICTURE: When the NAIA announced the 48-team field Monday, SOU was among the first and Loyola among the last of 14 at-large bid recipients. The Raiders are one of four Cascade Conference teams still alive (No. 3 Eastern Oregon, No. 7 Corban and College of Idaho being the others); only the Great Plains Athletic Conference has more in the tournament. The entirety of the Opening Round plays out Saturday at campus sites across the country, and the 24 winners advance to the Tyson Events Center in Sioux City, Iowa. There, they'll be divided into eight three-team pools and begin round-robin pool play Nov. 29. The pool champions open bracket play with the quarterfinal round Dec. 2.

BRIEFLY:

• In just three seasons on the court, Sadie Byrd has shot up to No. 8 on SOU's all-time blocks list with 373; with 17 more, she'd crack the top-five. Byrd, who was named to the All-Cascade Conference first team last week for the second time, ranks third among all NAIA players in blocks per set (1.5) and is the first Raider to lead the CCC in that category in 20 seasons. She compiled 34 blocks over SOU's last five matches.
• Right-side hitter Hannah Stadstad's .363 attacking average ranks 10th in the NAIA and is the highest for a non-middle at SOU in Josh Rohlfing's 17 years as head coach. She has been held under 10 kills just once in her last 12 outings, averaging 3.0 per set on the season. In 18 matches since Sept. 16, she is hitting .411 with 3.6 kills per set. Prior to that stretch, she'd hit .252 over 55 career matches.
• Marin Mackey joined Byrd and Stadstad on the All-CCC first team with 3.2 kills – the fifth-best clip in the CCC – on a .232 average and 2.6 digs per set. Megan Perry – who ranked top-10 in the CCC in both kills per set (2.8) and attacking average (.288) – made the second team. On the season, Mackey has 354 kills, Stadstad has 329 and Perry has 283; no SOU team during the Rohlfing era has produced three players with 300-plus kills.
• Freshman middle Tessa Zimmerman contributed 18 blocks over SOU's last five matches. She and Byrd are leading the Raiders to 2.6 per set, the fifth-most in the NAIA.
• SOU's .251 attack is the 13th-most efficient in the NAIA. First-year setters Vitoria Mattos (5.7 assists/set) and Annie Hite (5.1 assists/set) have directed it, helping the Raiders top the CCC leaderboard in average for the third time in five seasons.
• SOU's winning percentage (.813) is tied for the seventh-best in the 54-year history of the team. Of the Raiders' 26 wins, 17 have been in straight sets.
• The Raiders are 59-16 at home since moving into Lithia Motors Pavilion in 2018. They're 12-3 this season, with each of their losses to teams currently among the top-10 in the rankings.

ABOUT LOYOLA:

• The Wolf Pack are strangers to the tournament but not to success, having won 23-plus matches each of the last three seasons. Their seventh-year coach, Jesse Zabal, has a 143-98 record with the team. Two early wins bolstered the Wolf Pack's at-large case this season: in four sets over No. 9 (and then-No. 1) Jamestown (N.D.), and in five over No. 21 Central Methodist (Mo.). They finished second in the SSAC regular season at 13-2, and an SSAC Tournament semifinal loss to Mobile (Ala.) ended their five-match sweep streak. They're 9-1 on the road and received votes in the final NAIA coaches' poll at No. 34 overall.
• Their efficient attack is keyed by Amaya Bazemore, a 6-foot-3 senior middle. She posts 2.5 kills per set on a .388 average that ranks fifth in the NAIA, and she's among the country's 30 most prolific blockers at 1.1 per set. Loyola's top weapon on the outside is 5-8 senior Simone Tyson, who averages 2.4 kills on a .254 clip. Simone Moreau, their libero, was the SSAC Defensive Player of the Year, and middle Emily Sheperis joined her and Bazemore on the All-SSAC first team.
• One department where Loyola could take advantage of SOU is in serve-receive, where the Wolf Pack is No. 8 on the NAIA leaderboard in aces per set (2.3). Sheperis and setters Ellie Connor and Samantha Ingram have combined for 130.

SOU TOURNAMENT HISTORY: The Raiders are in the national tournament for the 13th time, all since 2001, and attempting to move on to the final site for the 12th time. The Opening Round format wasn't adopted until 2008, and prior to 2020 teams that were ranked high enough got a bye to the final site. The Raiders have played three Opening Round matches, all at home: they lost to Lewis-Clark State (Idaho) in five sets in 2009, swept College of the Ozarks (Mo.) in 2014, beat La Sierra (Calif.) in four in 2015, and fought off match point three times to knock off Jessup (Calif.) in a tiebreaker last year. The 2018 Raiders became the first team in program history to reach the quarterfinal round, and a year later they made it out of pool play for the third time before going down in the Round of 16. SOU went 0-2 in pool play against a pair of top-10 teams in 2022.