2024 Volleyball Schedule

No need to dance around this one with a fancy introduction. As the title indicates, the UT Arlington volleyball squad recently released their schedule for the upcoming season. Aside from a couple of spotlights here and there, nothing particularly stands out to me.

For the non-conference portion, I will highlight the four tournaments, the participants and their conference. I will also briefly look at the teams finish in the prior year.

The Mavericks open the season at the Sawyer Camillo Memorial Classic in Lafayette, Louisiana. There, they will play the Missouri Valley's Murray State Racers, the Southwestern Athletic Conference's Jackson State Tigers and twice former conference rival Louisiana Ragin' Cajuns from the Sun Belt Conference.

MSU was a game under .500 overall in 2023, 13-14, with a 7-11 MVC mark, placing 9th out of 12. JSU finished 17-13 and 10-6 in conference, good for 5th in the 12-team SWAC. Louisiana, arguably the best non-P5 team in the state, was 19-13, 9-7 SBC last year. The Sun Belt used divisional play to divide the 14 teams, but based on an unbalanced record, they'd have been 7th. 

Transfer Portal Activity

 In my last post, I did a first and solicited comments to initiate a post topic. In the early years, I wouldn't have, as this was an outlet for me and not a platform to garner attention. I have noticed an increased interaction in the comments section and decided to ask the community to break a topic block that uncharacteristically exists for me during the summer.

And Duck came to the plate first.

As I mentioned elsewhere, according to the UTA website, Coach Turner has signed eleven new players, two of whom appear to be freshmen. Those two plus the nine transfers include two centers, three forwards, four guards, and two unknowns. It appears there will not be room left on the court or the bench for many others, so I wonder who, if any of last year's players will be back. Does anybody know?

Wasn't expecting transfer portal activity to be the first topic, but it is certainly a welcomed one, though not for the "right" reasons.

Follower Feedback

 Happy Fourth of July to everyone!

What's painfully obvious is that today's holiday is in the middle of summer. We have the slowest part of the sports calendar during this month (coupled with the end of last month and the beginning of the next), but more so in college athletics. The only news happening right now is which schools left their old homes and joined a new conference.

That's where the summer chats series, formally named last year but has been my practice almost from the beginning of this blog, comes in. However, outside of schedule detective, which will make an appearance later this season, I'm at a loss for non-specific topics this year, having felt most of what is on my mind has thoroughly been discussed. I've posted about facilities, sports additions, top moments in UT Arlington history, conference realignment and football and more. I've been working on something but haven't made as much headway as I'd hoped. Outside of that, I have nothing new to add.

So this year, I'm gonna try something new.