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BYU's Suli Davis (25) celebrates a point with teammates during a Big 12 women's volleyball match against Kansas State at the Smith Fieldhouse on Friday, Oct. 31, 2025.

Courtesy BYU Athletics

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Utah Valley's Avery Page, left, and Alyvia Jaffa celebrate a point in a Western Athletic Conference women's volleyball match against Utah Tech on Saturday, Oct. 25, 2025.

Courtesy UVU Athletics

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At first glance, BYU looks to have a favorable matchup in the first two rounds of the NCAA women’s volleyball tournament.

The No. 5 seed Cougars (22-8), which finished the regular season on a four-match win streak and two wins over ranked teams, play Big West champion Cal Poly in the first round at the Galen Center in Los Angeles on Thursday. A win would likely match them up against No. 4 seed USC, a team BYU swept on Sept. 11 at the LMU Tournament.

Then again, we’ve seen this scenario before.

Last season, BYU came into the NCAA Tournament as No. 5 seed fresh off a three-match win streak and a victory against No. 11 Kansas to end Big 12 play. The Cougars were unceremoniously swept out of the tournament by Loyola Chicago in West Lafayette, Ind., the first time BYU had lost in the first round since 2005.

Hopefully, the Cougars have learned their lesson about taking anything for granted.

“I think we’re being consistently a little bit better,” BYU head coach Heather Olmstead said. “We’re playing a little bit cleaner volleyball for the past few matches. Even though the outcomes weren’t there before these matches, we’ve been playing good volleyball and things just didn’t go our way. We wanted to keep being consistently good at practice and focus on the fundamentals. The team has really bought in on going back to the fundamentals.”

Cal Poly (25-7) was the No. 2 seed in the Big West Tournament and knocked off No. 1 UC Davis 3-1 in the championship game to earn the league’s auto bid to the NCAA’s. The Mustangs are making their first NCAA appearance since 2019 and 17th overall.

A pair of 5-foot-10 outside hitters — Emma Fredrick (379 kills, 3.35 per set, .218) and Kendall Beshear (337 kills, 3.06, .261) — lead Cal Poly’s offensive attack.

The Mustangs are a dangerous team that fashioned a 3-2 record against teams that qualified for the NCAA Tournament, defeating St. Thomas, Minn. (3-0), Utah (3-0) and Northern Colorado (3-0) while losing to the University of Minnesota (3-1) and Tulsa (3-0) in non-conference play.

BYU has faced 14 programs that are in the 64-team NCAA field, nine from the Big 12. The Cougars were 12-6 against those teams, with two losses coming to No. 2 NCAA seed Arizona State.

BYU’s Suli Davis is the program’s all-time record holder for kills by a freshman in a season with 523 (4.59 per set) and the Cougars offense runs smoothly behind the top setter in the Big 12, sophomore Alex Bower (10.68 assists per set). Junior middle blocker Brielle Kemavor also leads the league in hitting percentage (.374).

First serve for the BYU-Cal Poly match will be at 6 p.m. MT and can be streamed on ESPN+. The USC-Princeton match follows at 7:30 p.m. MT.

Wolverines prep for Cardinal

Sam Atoa’s Utah Valley women’s volleyball team has the unenviable task of playing No. 2 Stanford in the first round of the NCAA Tournament at Maples Pavilion on Friday.

The Wolverines (16-10) earned the automatic bid from the Western Athletic Conference after beating Utah Tech 3-2 in the league tournament on Nov. 22.

This is the third trip to the Big Dance for Utah Valley, which previously made the tournament in the spring and fall of 2021.

Former Lehi standout Avery Page leads the Wolverines with 3.43 kills per set and former Orem star Sami Blackett averages 3.06. UVU is the top blocking team in the country at 3.47 blocks per set, led by 6-foot-3 senior Bella Wooden (1.89 blocks per set) and 6-3 sophomore Alyvia Jaffa (1.45).

The Cardinal are an NCAA fixture and have won nine national championships, the latest in 2019. This season, Stanford was 27-4 and 18-2 in the ACC. Former BYU men’s volleyball player Kevin Hambly is the Cardinal head coach.

No. 7 seed South Dakota State meets Arizona in the early match on Friday at 5:30 p.m. MT, with Stanford and Utah Valley to follow at 8 p.m. MT with streaming available on ESPN+.

2025 NCAA Women’s Volleyball Tournament

First and Second Round