So now that spring matches are complete, time to turn our attention to the fall. We should be getting the schedule news sometime in the next 30 days. We know we travel to Marquette this year for the 3rd year of the contract that also includes Western KY and whoever Marquette invites as the 4th team.
There is a roster update - MB India Gantt has left the program. That leaves us with 14 on the current roster with 3 of those early enrollee freshmen. The other 2 freshmen arrive this summer to begin workouts with the team. That’s a total of 16 players. 5 will be true freshmen. 4 will be redshirt freshmen. Half the roster has not played in a real D1 match and the one sophomore has played only a few rotations.
For 2025 - teams have a roster cap of 18. Scholarships/NIL Funding can be anything between a walk-on, a small amount of NIL, partial scholarships, to a full ride plus cash in the bank. It doesn’t appear there is really any “cap” on funding a volleyball player. But it doesn’t look like we will be carrying a full 18 roster unless we picked up a couple players from the short portal season now open.
It’s a new financial ball game. I know UD is actively raising money to help fund this year’s volleyball program. So expect budget changes - like maybe not as many matches or smaller travel rosters. It’s just a fact of life.
Stay Tuned.
2025 Schedule is supposed to be out soon.
After all the flowers are in bloom.
And the students are not in their dorm rooms.
Keep WSU on the schedule. RPI stuffer.
Buffalo will be the 4th team at Marquette this season - joining UD, Western KY and host Marquette.
DUQ also has Buffalo on their schedule.
SLU has MO St.
URI has Wyoming.
That is all I have found so far for this fall.
update - Marquette weekend is Sept 5-6-7 and we open against Buffalo on the 5th before going against WKY and Marquette. There should be a weekend of matches before that - starting Aug 29th or so.
Buffalo went 16-16 last year. In 2023 they went 23-9. 10 on their current roster. 4 recruits in the fall. All appear to be freshmen, sophomores or juniors for next year. Still young squad but they should be better than last year.
Schedule is out.
https://daytonflyers.com/sports/womens-volleyball/schedule/2025
Great schedule. 3 teams that finished last year ranked in the Top 25. Plus one RVs. Plus South Dakota St whose program has been on a steady rise the last couple years. They went 27-3 last year. I’ll break it down more in the next week or two.
Every year UD expects to win the A10 Championship and secure the auto bid. Additionally, every year the personnel in Athletics and the coaching staff always try to build a schedule to have a resume good enough for an At-Large bid. We needed it last year - our best year ever. We finished with an RPI of 12. That included our NCAA matches against SC, Baylor and NE, We just missed out securing one of the Top 16 seeds and the chance to host. That is also a secondary goal of our schedule. Last year’s schedule accomplished those two goals. It was the loss in the A10 Championship that probably knocked us down 1 or 2 spots from a top 16 hosting seed. So I’m going to look at this year’s schedule in 5 segments to see how it matches up to last year. The portal and all the transfers makes it harder to know if teams will be better or worse. (Graduating players was hard enough.) But I’ll take my best guess. I will do 3 OOC teams at a time, as the finished in the final RPI. Dayton finished at 12. No one on this year’s schedule finished higher. I will match each team up to a team from last year’s final RPI. first up is UTAH.
UTAH finished with a RPI 15. They pair up with last year’s opponent Marquette at RPI 16. So we need Utah to finish this year with an RPI close to 16. They were 25-6 last year. It’s impressive they have lost no one to the portal. They have added 2 players from the portal. They currently list 14 players with portal additions counted. They lost 8 players to graduation as they, like UD, had a lot of 5th year players. 8 of their current 14 players - more than half - are juniors and seniors so they do have experience. They also have a pipeline to overseas talent and I expect they will add more players before the fall. They play in the Big 12 and finished 3rd last year at 14-4.
IMO, Utah won’t lose more than 8 matches and that should keep their RPI at 18 or less. That’s a wash in my book with our top RPI of 16 last year. And a wash in scheduling is a win when evaluating how good our schedule is. So, 2025 vs 2024 schedule…25 is up 1-0.
MARQUETTE finished with an RPI 16. They pair up with last year’s opponent UNI who finished RPI 30. The Marquette coach took the Florida job. Good news is we should be able to schedule Florida in the next 1-3 years. Bad news is players leave when coaches leave. Marquette lost their L/DS to Kentucky - which says she was good. And, they lost a freshman setter who redshirted last year to Michigan State. They have added a Sophomore DS/L from Middle TN and a Senior OPP from Santa Clara. They only have 12 players on their roster. Seven are juniors/seniors. Expect them to pick up several more players. But based on what we know today, IMO Marquette will not be as good as last year. However, they had a major player injured early last year and lost some matches. They went 25-9 and 16-2 in the Big East. We need them to have an RPI of 30 or better to keep pace with our schedule last year. I think they are still in the top 25 or dang close. So this team is a win for the 2025 schedule…now up 2-0 over 2024.
MINNESOTA finished at RPI 25. They pair up with last year’s Illinois at RPI 42. They were clearly better than Illinois last year, but for scheduling evaluation, it’s the RPI 42 we are looking at. Will MN finish with an RPI better than 42? Yes. By a mile. They already have 17 players on their roster for this fall, and that’s after 2 have entered the portal, but have not been picked up. One is a grad MB and the other is a red-shirt OH/OPP. MN has added a Grad MB from Purdue who is good and a Jr. setter from Rutgers who is a good young talent. As a sophomore she played in more than half the sets and had 4 starts. MN went 21-11 last year and 13-7 in the B10. The conference is tough, so I estimate about the same 7 losses. Their schedule is not out yet, and the B10 rotates teams so they won’t be playing the same conference schedule. So maybe an opportunity to improve there. It will come down to their OOC schedule. But they will be more experienced, so I see some improvement unless it’s just a brutal OOC schedule. They play Dayton after all.
‘My best guess is MN improves their RPI 5-8 spots, putting them in the Top 20. Last year was actually a little down year for them. They will be way above the RPI 42 they need to help us. Easy schedule win for UD on this one. 2025 schedule is up 3-0.
