Beach Volleyball Tabs No. 3 Seed in NCAA Championships
4/30/2017 12:00:00 AM | Women's Beach Volleyball
NCAA TOURNAMENT BRACKET
MALIBU, Calif. - The second-ever NCAA Beach Volleyball Championship bracket is set, as released by the NCAA Women's Beach Volleyball Committee on Sunday afternoon. As featured in the NCAA Selection Show, the 3rd-ranked Pepperdine beach volleyball squad earned the No. 3 seed for the upcoming trip to Gulf Shores, Ala. The Waves will open the tournament against 6th-seeded and 5th-ranked Long Beach State on Friday at 10 a.m. PT.
The Championships will take place at Gulf Shores Public Beach from May 5-7 and will be televised by Turner networks with truTV providing live coverage on Friday, May 5 and Saturday, May 6 from 12-3 p.m. PT. The championship round will air on TBS on Sunday, May 7 at 11 a.m. PT. Additional live-streaming coverage of every court in each match of the tournament will be available on NCAA.com.
For the second-consecutive year, the tournament will be hosted by the city of Gulf Shores, University of Alabama at Birmingham and Orange Beach Sports Commission.
The Waves (24-3) have earned the No. 3 seed for the second-straight year and will face sixth-seeded Long Beach State on May 5 at 10 a.m. PT. Pepperdine faced the 49ers twice throughout the regular season, winning both match-ups with a 3-2 result with one win on the road and one at home.
USC earned the top-seed and will face eighth-seeded South Carolina, UCLA tabbed the No. 2-seed and will be challenged by No. 7-seeded LSU and Florida State picked up the No. 4-seed and will go head-to-head with No. 5-seeded Hawai'i.
Pepperdine has faced five of the other seven universities selected to the field throughout the regular season, collecting a 7-3 record against. Along with two wins against LBSU, the Waves downed UCLA 3-2 in the opening match of the season at Zuma Beach. The team also bested Florida State and Hawai'i twice, while also collecting one loss to each of the teams as well as USC.
The double-elimination tournament is the NCAAs 90th National Championship. The field was selected from the 65 NCAA institutions sponsoring the sport of beach volleyball. Three teams were selected form the East Region and three teams were selected from the West Regions. The remaining two teams were selected at-large from the teams across the country. All eight teams were then seeded.
The Waves earned back-to-back West Coast Conference Championships with a title-win in Santa Monica on April 22. Head Coach Nina Matthies garnered WCC Coach of the Year honors and seven Waves earned All-WCC recognition.
Graduate student Brittany Howard (Mountain View, Calif./Mountain View HS/Stanford), senior Delaney Knudsen (Valencia, Calif./Valencia HS), junior Corinne Quiggle (Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla./Ponte Vedra HS) and sophomore Madalyn Roh (Scottsdale, Ariz./Chaparral HS) all earned All-WCC first team acclaim, while sophomores Skylar Caputo (Manhattan Beach, Calif./Mira Costa HS) and Heidi Dyer (San Clemente, Calif./Saddleback Valley Christian HS) tabbed spots on the second team. Freshman Deahna Kraft (Seattle, Wash./Garfield HS) also earned a spot on the WCC All-Freshman team.
For all championship site match times and more information about the championship, go to NCAA.com/BeachVolleyball. Follow @WavesBeachVB for updates and check on PepperdineWaves.com for full results, recaps and more!
