2024 Volleyball Season is Nigh

 The UT Arlington Athletic Department kicks off the 2024/25 athletic season later this week as the Volleyball team travels to their first match of the season. As is customary, the Western Athletic Conference released its preseason poll and as I alluded to a couple of blog entries ago, the Mavs have garnered respect in the conference.

To refresh, in the UTA hosting championship post, I mentioned the volleyball team is returning a lot of talent. In conjunction, the WAC lost two of its top four programs in Stephen F. Austin and UT Rio Grande Valley. Looking at who is returning, last year's results and recent historical performance, this year's preseason volleyball poll was about as easy as it gets, even in the transfer portal era. 

As we head into the season, here's what the prognosticator's think the final standings will look like, with first place votes in parenthesis:

2024 Schedule Detective

 We are on the eve of the upcoming athletic season, which means the summer dropoff in athletic competition is nearing its end. To fill the void until late, late August, let's dip into this year's edition of schedule detective.

For the new-comers, much of my information comes from Rocco Miller on X. He's a great follow for college basketball. While not all the information comes from him, he gets a lot of scoops and information in regards to the non-conference scheduling contract. Instead of having to look through his thousands of tweets, I'll compile it here, though some games do come from other sources.

Going in this season, we knew there'd be a return game from last season in Oral Roberts. There's a high chance, but not a guaranteed one, in North Texas and Texas State reappearing on the schedule. There's usually a guarantee game, or usually many, as a (usual) Power 5 school pays a non-P5 school for a one-off game, a non-DI, or many, and a multi-team event, or MTE, on the final schedule release. Additionally, the Western Athletic Conference has released the conference schedule, so more than three quarters of this coming season is known. 

Here's what I can report so far:

UTA Hosting some Championships

This week, the Western Athletic Conference announced the championship sites for the upcoming athletic year. While many are still the same, basketball will be in Vegas, baseball in Arizona, for example, there's a good slate of new sites throughout the year.

For the first time since the UT Arlington Athletic Department rejoined the WAC, Arlington (which has been the home city for the conference for over a year) will host multiple sports postseason dreams.

The last two years, the tennis tournament champions were crowned in Arlington. UTA's men's tennis team has taken advantage of the home-town hosting and made their way to the NCAA's. But tennis has been it. Until this upcoming year.

Here's the list of the of champion sites: