Already one of the most popular women’s spectator sports in the US, the 2024 NCAA volleyball season is off to the races this month as the shifting lines of modern college sports plays out in real time.
Thanks to major conference realignments, regional rivalries turned national storylines will drive the narrative all the way to December's NCAA tournament.
The Big Ten's big changes
At the forefront of these shifts is longtime volleyball powerhouse the Big Ten, which welcomed USC, UCLA, Oregon, and Washington from the Pac-12 this summer to bring the conference total to 18 teams.
Added travel, raucous home crowds, and even fiercer competition will play into the conference's season storyline as Midwest heavyweights Wisconsin and Nebraska meet West Coast specialists in a quest to bring the Big Ten its first NCAA title since 2021.
"We knew the venues, everything was comfortable," Oregon head coach Matt Ulmer, speaking with JWS at last month's Big Ten Media Day in Chicago, said of his team’s former Pac-12 home. "I think we're going to [see] a lot of uncomfortableness this year, just with new change."
Surprises and upsets already define the 2024 season
Mirroring that uncertainty, several 2023 heavy-hitters have already produced surprising results this season. Two-time defending champion Texas fell to Minnesota in early non-conference play and again to unranked Miami last weekend, while Wisconsin went 0-3 before picking up a pair of weekend wins.
Then last week, 2023 runners-up Nebraska suffered a historic upset loss to unranked SMU, though they also bounced back with weekend victories.
With Power 10 rankings already a rollercoaster, expect even more impressive performances, greater parity, and larger crowds as college volleyball rides its meteoric rise through 2024.
Decorated Iowa basketball coach Lisa Bluder announced her retirement on Monday, with assistant coach Jan Jensen next in line to take over the head coaching position.
Bluder retires as the winningest women’s basketball coach in Big Ten history, amassing 528 wins and five Big Ten tournament titles over her 24 years. During her time at the helm, Iowa made 18 NCAA tournament appearances, including back-to-back trips to the National Championship with star guard Caitlin Clark.
"It has been the honor of my career to be a part of the Iowa Hawkeye family," Bluder wrote in a statement. "And to lead a women's basketball program filled with so many talented and remarkable young women, who have gone on to do great things in their careers and, more importantly, in their lives."
She spent the last few years coaching the remarkable Caitlin Clark. The eventual No. 1 overall pick in April’s WNBA Draft, Clark became the all-time leading scorer in D-I basketball, men’s or women’s, this past season, winning back-to-back Naismith Player of the Year awards under Bluder's leadership.
In a tweet posted Monday, Clark reacted to Bluder’s retirement by thanking her.
"Simply no one better at building a team," Clark wrote. "Thank you for believing in me more than anyone. Enjoy retirement, coach. Very much deserved."
Bluder said Monday that her decision to retire came as she began preparing for the offseason. The longtime coach has previously said she was taking it year-by-year.
"After the season ended, I spent time with our student-athletes and coaches reviewing the season and preparing those moving on for what comes next," Bluder said. "With that also came personal contemplation about what this journey has meant to me, how to best champion this program and what the future looks like for my family and me. After then taking some time away with my husband, David, it became clear to me that I am ready to step aside.
"There is never an ideal time to retire, and I am sure this fall that I will miss the games, the practices, the road trips, the atmosphere, the tremendous fans and, most importantly, the players. But my belief in the foundation of this program, knowing that success is now an unrelenting component of women's basketball at the University of Iowa gives me comfort as I transition to become the program's biggest champion."
Bluder's coaching tenure dates back to 1985, when she coached at St. Ambrose University for six seasons before accepting a head coaching job at Drake in 1991. During her nine years in Des Moines, Bluder led the Bulldogs to four Missouri Valley Conference Tournament championships (1995, 1997, 1998, 2000) alongside three regular season titles (1997, 1998, 2000).
Assistant head coach Jan Jensen has been tapped to take over the role at Iowa, having worked shoulder to shoulder with the outgoing Bluder for a major part of her career. After playing under Bluder at Drake, Jensen moved on to join her former coach off the court as an assistant coach for the Bulldogs.
"I love Jan to death," 2019 Naismith Player of the Year Megan Gustafson told The Gazette. "She deserves this, and she’s ready for it."
Gustafson's former Iowa teammate, post player Monika Czinano, echoed the sentiment.
"It’s the perfect succession line, in my opinion," Czinano said. "She’s one of the main reasons for my development. She’s ready for it."
Caitlin Clark’s record-breaking trajectory – and her legacy – continued to grow on Saturday.
While she moved to fifth on the all-time NCAA career scoring list, she also set the Big Ten record for assists. And she also became the first D-I player (men’s or women’s) to have 3,000+ points, 900+ assists and 800+ rebounds in a career.
At this point, Clark has accumulated so many accolades that they sometimes get lost – literally.
“I have a couple storage units back home my parents put stuff in. But like my 3,000-point ball has just been sitting in our locker room,” Clark said. “Sometimes, it gets lost in my locker. I don’t know. Until I clean it out or make one of my teammates clean my locker. They get so annoyed they offer to clean it for me.”
Clark finished with 35 points and 10 assists, having seven points in three minutes to help Iowa to an 11-2 advantage. When she wasn’t scoring during that stretch, she was assisting.
On top of being within reach of the all-time scoring record, Clark is now top-15 all-time in women’s basketball assists.
“I relish it,” Iowa coach Lisa Bluder said of watching Clark break records. “It’s just so much fun. I want her to get double-doubles. I want her to break records. It’s just, to me it’s so much fun to watch her do that. I never get tired of her passing. And I get to go to practice every day.”
Elsewhere this weekend:
- UCLA took down USC despite a JuJu Watkins second-career double-double (27 points, 11 rebounds). The Bruins move to 12-0 while USC’s undefeated season is no more.
- Baylor upended Texas’ perfect season with their 14th-straight win against the Longhorns in Austin. Without Rori Harmon, Madison Booker led the Longhorns with 25 points, eight assists and seven rebounds.