The 2024-2025 NCAA volleyball season began in early September and the initial rankings seemed set in stone. However, things got heated when the top teams began a losing streak against unranked teams.
The University of Texas, two-time consecutive national champions, started the season ranked No. 1 and began its season in Wisconsin at the State Farm Women’s College Volleyball Showcase, where the team first faced and won against a No. 3 seeded team from Wisconsin.
The concern began the next day when the Longhorns faced No. 18 Minnesota and lost. There was confidence that Texas would rebound when it returned to Austin to face Miami – but it fell to the unranked Hurricanes, and that’s when people started wondering what was going on in the volleyball world.
The Longhorns aren’t the only victims of the seemingly random losing bug. The University of Nebraska began its season ranked No. 2, started off strong 3-0, and then traveled to Dallas to face then-unranked SMU. The Mustangs swept the Cornhuskers and then beat No. 18 Baylor in Waco to secure their first seed at No. 22.
The question remains: What’s going on? There’s no honest answer to that, but the surprising aspect has to do with how dominant these teams usually are. Texas and Nebraska both have the best recruits in the country, so they’re not used to losing.
The Longhorns are currently ranked No. 8 — which speaks to the strength of their program, as anything outside of a top-five ranking is considered bad — with a .500 winning percentage thanks to a recent loss to undefeated Stanford. Nebraska’s only loss of the season is to SMU, which raises another question: Has the ACC taken the lead as the top conference in volleyball?
It may be time for a new dynasty to take over. Pittsburgh is ranked first this week, Stanford is second. The ACC members in the top 25 are Louisville (4), Georgia Tech (13), Florida State (18) and SMU (22).
Thanks to the newfound ferocity of the ACC, the Tigers have a tough task ahead of them. They face Pitt, Louisville and SMU in succession, followed by a doubleheader against Georgia Tech in October. They’ll be the first Clemson team to travel to their West Coast opponents when they visit Stanford in November, and will be tested again when they return to the East with back-to-back games against Miami and Florida State.
Given the many dominant forces in the conference, we could see an ACC team win the NCAA volleyball national championship for the first time in December.
