University of Southern Mississippi Athletics
Volleyball Announces 2011 Schedule
7/20/2011 12:00:00 AM | Women's Volleyball
July 20, 2011
HATTIESBURG, Miss. - Southern Miss volleyball head coach Abbey Sutherland announced the release the 2011 schedule that will feature four tournaments and a total of 12 home dates for the Golden Eagles.
"I'm very happy with this schedule because we are starting out at home," Sutherland said. "This is going to be a challenging schedule for us. We have added some high caliber teams with high RPIs and they come from good conferences. I expect us to have some challenges, but I also believe we will be successful."
Southern Miss opens the 2011 campaign by hosting Jackson State, Northwestern State and Chattanooga in the Southern Miss Invitational, Aug. 26-27, before traveling to Iowa State for a tournament, Sept. 2-3, which includes Iowa State, Arizona State and Iowa. Iowa State participated in the NCAA Tournament last season.
The Golden Eagles also will play in the Milwaukee Invitational, Sept. 9-10, with teams Milwaukee, Marquette and Akron, then travel to the Houston Baptist Invitational, Sept. 16-17, that include teams Houston Baptist, Southeastern Louisiana and Louisiana Tech.
The league will continue to use the same 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 UTEP and UCF.
"Conference USA is really interesting because there hasn't been a back-to-back champion for the past eight years," Sutherland said. "You don't know what to expect and every match is going to be tough. All of the coaches in the league have worked hard together with the common goal to increase the RPI and getting more teams in the NCAA Tournament. We adopted a non-conference scheduling philosophy and that is something I believe will help Conference USA. Not only do I want to schedule tougher teams to help our RPI, but also want to help the conference's overall RPI as well."
Southern Miss opens C-USA play at Houston (Sept. 23) and Rice (Sept. 25). After playing 11 consecutive matches on the road, the Eagles return home to host Memphis (Sept. 30) and UAB (Oct. 2).
From there, Southern Miss travels to C-USA reigning champion and NCAA participant Tulsa for two matches (Oct. 8-9) then returns home for a weekend series against East Carolina (Oct. 14) and Marshall (Oct. 16).
The Black and Gold head to Tulane for a mid-week match (Oct. 19) and continue to UTEP (Oct. 21) before returning to Reed Green Coliseum to host UCF (Oct. 23).
Southern Miss returns to the road for a weekend series at Marshall (Oct. 28) and East Carolina (Oct. 30), before hosting SMU in two matches (Nov. 4-5).
The Golden Eagles conclude their road schedule at UAB (Nov. 11) and Memphis (Nov. 12) before returning home to close out the regular season against Rice (Nov. 18), Houston (Nov. 20) and Tulane (Nov. 22).
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 nine letterwinners that include nine of the top 10 players from a year ago that helped the Golden Eagles finish with a 19-12 overall record and 12-8 in league play. Six starters are among the nine letterwinners. Sutherland welcomes five newcomers to this year's squad.
