By Kelli Tennant
FOX Sports West and PRIME TICKET
TENNANT ARCHIVE
Two wins in Dayton are all the young Women of Troy need to secure a return to volleyball's Final Four for the first time since 2007.
One of the victories though, will most likely have to be over Pac-10 rival Stanford.
"Our draw is about right for us, but disappointing that the top-three Pac-10 teams are all on the same side of the draw," USC assistant coach Tim Nollan said of Stanford (26-3), USC (27-4) and California (27-3). "It would have been better to spread us out so that we could have all had a chance to all three advance to the national semifinal. This weekend will be tough traveling to Dayton and play a tough Indiana team (23-11) but that is what the tournament is all about.
"Playing tough teams knowing we will get their very best shot every night."
USC, which is looking to advance to the Final Four for the sixth time since 2000, is a young team with upside, led by junior middle blocker Lauren Williams, junior setter Kendall Bateman and head coach Mick Haley, who has historically done a great job of getting his teams to pique during the postseason.
On Friday, Haley and the Women of Troy will face Indiana, somewhat of a shock to have advanced to the Sweet 16. The Hoosiers were a surprise first-round host with just a 21-11 regular season record, but used the home crowd to help defeat the Miami Hurricanes, three sets to two in the first round and followed that up with an upset of No. 11 Tennessee, also three sets to two. Indiana will travel just two hours to Dayton, Ohio for Friday's match up with the heavily-favored Women of Troy.
Should USC advance to the elite eight, as expected, they will face the winner of Ohio State (24-11) and heavily-favored Stanford, setting up an all Pac-10 showdown with trip to Kansas City and the Final Four on the line.
SC and Stanford met twice in 2010, with the Cardinal winning both by a combined six sets to one. USC won the first set of the season between the two schools at the Galen Center on Oct. 8, only to drop the next three sets, 25-23, 25-20, 25-15. In the rematch in Palo Alto on Nov. 7, Stanford swept USC in three sets, (25-19, 25-21, 25-19).
These two schools are intense rivals, perhaps even bigger than the SC vs. UCLA rivalry in volleyball. Haley, and Stanford head coach John Dunning, are widely known as two of the greatest coaches in the history of women's volleyball. Against each other their art of coaching truly shines as these two rivals seem to knock each other out in every single tournament, somehow, someway. In 2007,Stanford snuck by USC by two points in the fifth set at the National Semifinal at Arco Arena in Sacramento, SC's last appearance in the Final Four.
Stanford went on to lose in the final to Penn State, the Nittany Lions first of three consecutive National Championships. This year, there isn't one team that has stood out the entire year as Penn State had the previous three years. Florida has the No. 1 seed, but they weren't the dominant powerhouse that can walk through the tournament.
So a little vengeance in Dayton would put USC in the Final Four, and with so much parity in college volleyball this year, it seems as though it's anyone's title at this point.
