What to know about Wisconsin volleyball's first NCAA Tournament opponent, potential second-round foes
It's tournament time, so let's take a look at who's coming to Madison this week.
MADISON, Wis. — Kelly Sheffield knows more about his University of Wisconsin volleyball program’s first-round foe in the NCAA Tournament.
But his Badgers will first receive a some insight about their potential opponents to start the week.
Wisconsin (24-4, 17-3 Big Ten) was named the No. 3 seed in the Texas regional and secured hosting first and second rounds matches. The Badgers will first face Eastern Illinois (24-7) on Thursday at the Field House, and if they defeat the Panthers, will move on to play the winner of North Carolina (21-8) and UTEP (25-4) on Friday.
“I think everybody does it a little bit different,” Sheffield said. “When you’re playing back-to-back, then you have to be kind of prepared for all three teams is how we’ve done it. Fortunately in the other rounds, if you’re fortunate to get there, you’ve got a little bit of space in between. And the times that we have played back-to-back, we’ve done that twice this year, early in the week, we went through our second opponent early. And then as we got closer at match time, we focused in on our first opponent. And that’s what we’ll do.
“We’ll give them a little bit of information today on UNC and UTEP, and then tomorrow will be Eastern Illinois for the rest of the week going up until match time. So it’s just not brand new if you’ve got the opportunity of going through the first one. So last night was spending a little bit of time on each of them to familiarize myself. And then, as we’re moving toward the rest of today, it’ll be Eastern Illinois.”