Stetson Hatters draw No. 2 TCU to open NCAA Beach Volleyball Championship on Friday
As the recent college basketball tournaments taught us, seeding is just a number, and the Stetson Hatters hope to become the latest proof in this weekend’s NCAA Beach Volleyball Championship.
The Hatters, in the NCAA Championship for the second straight year, once again face a tall hurdle right off the bat — as the 15 seed, they face No. 2 seed TCU to open play Friday in Gulf Shores, Ala.
Stetson isn’t just facing a second-seeded Horned Frogs team, but a TCU squad that blanked the Hatters, 5-0, five weeks ago in Jacksonville.
Stetson coach Kristina Hernandez isn’t just banking on strategic adjustments, but also pins hope on her team’s improvement over the season’s closing weeks, which included a 4-0 run to a seventh ASUN conference championship last week.
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“We’re playing more consistently than we were with our offensive execution,” she says. “We’ll go back and rewatch our match versus them, see what we did well and can do more of, things we didn’t see at first, and then tweak some adjustments we need to make some better plays.”
The Hatters enter the national finals with a 22-14 record and ranked 17th in the nation, while TCU is 35-2 and ranked second. A year ago, Stetson was in a similar situation, facing No. 3 seed UCLA in the opening round, and narrowly lost, 3-2.
Hernandez will line up the same pairings that swept last week’s ASUN championship — No. 1: Karin Zolnercikova/Shae Henson; No. 2: Anete Namike/Carolina Ferraris; No. 3: Tori Clement/ Gabriella Bramante; No. 4: Audrey Gauthier/Noelle Weintraub; No. 5: Aleksandra Stadnik/Lauren Della.
The NCAA began sanctioning a beach volleyball national championship in 2016, and this is Stetson’s fourth trip to the final tournament. The Hatters have twice finished as high as sixth in the final national rankings, and an upset Friday would be a big step toward returning to that status.
“We are working constantly for top-10 and top-5,” Hernandez says. “We’ve been up there in some earlier years and that’s what our scheduling and goals align with. We schedule tough to put ourselves in those matches and see where we end up.”
The winner of Friday’s match advances to Saturday play, which involves a noon quarterfinal and 3:30 semifinal. The final is scheduled for Sunday at noon. ESPN+ will stream each match of the tournament, while ESPN2 will broadcast Saturday’s matches and ESPN will carry Sunday’s final.
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Stetson Hatters face TCU Friday to open Beach Volleyball Championship
