University of Southern Mississippi Athletics
Volleyball Announces 2010 Volleyball Schedule
7/21/2010 12:00:00 AM | Women's Volleyball
July 21, 2010
HATTIESBURG, Miss. - The Southern Miss volleyball team has released its 2010 schedule that will feature three tournaments and a total of 11 home dates for the reigning Conference USA Regular Season Champions.
"I believe our schedule will be very challenging for our team," first-year coach Abbey Sutherland said. "It definitely will help us prepare for our conference schedule. We've put together a schedule with quality teams."
Southern Miss opens the campaign by hosting South Alabama, Nicholls State and Kennesaw State in the Southern Miss Invitational, Aug. 27-28, before traveling to Middle Tennessee State for a tournament, Sept. 3-4, which includes Georgia Southern, Miami and Auburn. MTSU and Miami participated in the NCAA Tournament last season.
The Golden Eagles also will play in the Ole Miss Tournament, Sept. 10-11, with teams Louisiana-Lafayette and Samford, before returning home to host Mississippi State (Sept. 15).
The league will go to a new format for the upcoming season, playing a 20-match conference schedule instead of the 16-match slate in the past. The Golden Eagles will play every member twice with the exception of Tulsa and SMU.
"With the new format, every match we play will be very important," Sutherland said. "We didn't make the NCAA Tournament last season, but with our strength of schedule and having a good conference record should help us toward making the tournament this year."
Southern Miss opens C-USA play against the league tournament champion, and NCAA participate, Rice, in a two-match series (Sept. 24-25). The Eagles remain at home to host Tulsa (Oct. 1) before traveling to SMU (Oct. 3).
From there, Southern Miss travels to Houston for two matches (Oct. 9-10) before returning home for a five-match homestand beginning with UCF (Oct. 15) before UTEP (Oct. 17), Tulane (Oct. 20), Marshall (Oct. 22) and East Carolina (Oct. 24).
The Golden Eagles travel to Memphis (Oct. 29), UAB (Oct. 31), UTEP (Nov. 5) and UCF (Nov.7) before returning home to close out the home portion of their schedule with matches against UAB (Nov. 12) and Memphis (Nov. 14).
Southern Miss concludes the regular season on the road with matches at East Carolina (Nov. 19), Marshall (Nov. 21) and at Tulane (Nov. 27).
There will not be a Conference USA Tournament under the new conference format as the regular season champion will earn the automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.
Southern Miss returns 12 letterwinners that include nine of the top 10 players from a year ago that helped the Golden Eagles finish with a 27-5 overall record and 14-2 in league play. Five starter are among the 12 letterwinners.
