Volleyball: 2012 Season

[DanFreibergerForHeisman]

The SMU Mustangs start the 2012 season Friday night in Atlanta against Charleston Southern in the Georgia Tech tournament. SMU has a challenging Saturday against Cal State-Fullerton in the morning and Georgia Tech in the evening.

2012 is a pivotal year for the SMU volleyball program. After an impressive 25-6 record in 2010, SMU was snubbed by the NCAA selection committee when they chose Mississippi for the tournament over SMU even though SMU was ranked 45 in RPI and Mississippi was ranked 46.

Believing the Mustangs were passed over because of a lack of schedule strength, SMU responded by playing an extremely challenging schedule in 2011. Unfortunately, the Mustangs struggled to a 15-17 record (but still managed a respectable 96 RPI ranking).

A much more manageable yet challenging schedule awaits SMU in 2012, and hopefully the team will be able to take the experience gained last season and show some progress this year.

SMU is led by senior middle blocker Courtney Manning, who was selected to the C-USA preseason all-conference team. SMU also has two transfers from good volleyball schools who will be counted on to provide instant impact - setter Olivia Bailey from Loyola Marymount and middle blocker Maddie Lozano from Arizona.

Sophomore outside hitter Savannah Myklebust also really came on strong towards the end of 2011, and she should provide even more firepower for the Mustangs in 2012.

The C-USA coaches picked SMU to finish sixth in the conference this season. Most likely, SMU will exceed those expectations. In order to make the tournament, however, SMU will probably need to secure the C-USA automatic bid considering the NCAA has not taken an at-large team from the conference since 2009.

It will be a fun and exciting season nevertheless - hopefully SMU will be able to leave C-USA with a bang.

Go Ponies!