Volleyball At present: Kiraly provides assistants; extra boffo ESPN rankings

LOUISVILLE — Greetings from the location of the NCAA Division I Volleyball Championship, the place we’ll be within the KFC Yum! Middle all day Wednesday for practices and information conferences for Pittsburgh, Louisville, Nebraska and Penn State.

That is one other potpourri version of Volleyball At present, as a result of Karch Kiraly added assistants to his USA males’s nationwide crew, an NCAA crew employed a coach, USA Volleyball will honor our good friend Invoice Forrester, and we’ve got extra excellent news from ESPN about its volleyball broadcasts. And Arizona received the NIVC:

Kiraly tabs Slabe, Weber

Not surprisingly, after he resigned as head coach at NC State, Luke Slabe will be a part of the employees of recent USA males’s coach Karch Kiraly. He was one in every of Kiraly’s assistants when the USA ladies received gold in Tokyo. Kiraly additionally added Argentinian Javier Weber.

Learn the USA Volleyball information launch right here.

Frier Award goes to Invoice Forrester

USA Volleyball will honor longtime official and occasion administrator Invoice Forrester with the celebrated Harold T. Friermood “Frier” Lifetime Achievement Award on the 2025 USA Volleyball Corridor of Fame. The award is USA Volleyball’s highest honor, recognizing people who’ve made extraordinary contributions to volleyball in the USA.

The Corridor of Fame on the Dorothy C. Boyce Banquet will likely be held Could 21, 2025, in Denver, simply earlier than the USA Volleyball Open Nationwide Championship begins on the Colorado Conference Middle.

USA Volleyball beforehand honored Forrester with the George J. Fisher Chief in Volleyball Award in 2004 and the Glenn G. Davies Referee Service Award in 1999. He’s the group’s 57^th recipient of the Frier Award.

Learn the USA Volleyball information launch right here.

Tarleton State hires Jazmyne Johnson

Tarleton State of Stephenville, Texas, which completed 7-22 final season, 2-14 within the WAC, has employed Louisiana assistant Jazmyne Johnson as its head coach.

Johnson, who was with the Ragin’ Cajuns for 4 years, performed at Mississippi State.

Learn the Tarleton information launch right here.

Most-watched NCAA volleyball regionals

Because of Larry Hamel for this breakdown of the information that ESPN had extra record-breaking numbers final week:

Televising the regional rounds of the NCAA ladies’s volleyball event on platforms with larger visibility produced excellent outcomes for ABC/ESPN. Complete-average viewership for the eight spherical of 16 matches (all on ESPN2) and the 4 regional finals (three on ESPN2, one on ABC) unfold over 4 days noticed an astounding 98% enhance over 2023. ESPN PR famous they had been the most-watched regionals on document, averaging 401,000 viewers.

The showdown on Sunday afternoon between red-hot Large Ten rivals Nebraska and Wisconsin earlier than a packed home in Lincoln on over-the-air ABC, predictably, lured the most important viewers in historical past for a regional volleyball closing. Buoyed by extremely invested fan bases from each colleges, the ABC telecast was watched by 798,000 viewers, regardless of a comparatively quick match (received by Nebraska in three units) whereas going towards intense competitors from NFL soccer on CBS and Fox. The “early” NFL window on these networks mixed for twenty-four.9 million viewers.

4 different matches produced the Nos. 2, 3, 4 and 5 high TV viewerships in regional rounds, in accordance with ESPN PR. The regional closing on Sunday night time between Creighton and Penn State was seen by a mean of 674,000. Regional semifinals on Friday night time netted 617,000 viewers for Dayton-Nebraska and 524,000 for Texas A&M-Wisconsin. And the Stanford-Louisville regional closing on Saturday night time was watched by 524,000.

Ladies’s volleyball additionally continued to show progress in key demographics coveted by advertisers. Viewership in the course of the telecasts of the regional rounds skyrocketed 232% within the 18-34 age group, 115% within the youngsters demo (2-17) and 112% amongst ladies of all ages. The 16 regional matches had been piggybacked on the ESPN+ streaming platform they usually loved a year-over-year enhance of 44%.

Arizona wins NIVC

Within the first title match to go to a fifth set, Arizona beat Bowling Inexperienced to turn out to be the primary NIVC champion to win on their house court docket.