The one downside to traveling to Washington, D.C. for the first two rounds of the 2008 NCAA volleyball tournament, senior Katie Swoboda said, is that Duck fans won’t be able to see the team play.
“We have the greatest fans,” Swoboda said. “It’s unfortunate for them that we couldn’t host, but we are still excited to get the tournament started.”
The word “excited” has been thrown around a lot since Sunday evening, when the No. 7-ranked Oregon volleyball team first learned it would travel to the District of Columbia. Junior Sonja Newcombe is excited to go to D.C. Senior Kristen Forristall is excited to play. And head coach Jim Moore is excited that his team’s draw doesn’t have a single Pacific-10 Conference opponent until late in the tournament.

“I’m really excited in terms of our draw,” Moore said. “Not having to play anyone in the Pac-10 is huge.”
Oregon comes into the first round as the No. 11 overall seed in the tournament. Unlike in men’s and women’s basketball, only the top 16 teams are seeded, and then placed on spots in the bracket to where the higher seed is matched with the lower seed. For example, No. 1 seed Penn State is matched in the same bracket with No. 16 seed Tulane. No. 2 seed Stanford is matched with No. 15 seed Florida, and so on.
The Ducks (23-8) are in the same bracket as No. 3 seed Texas, and they face unseeded Delaware (19-15) in the first round. The match starts at 2 p.m. PST at Bender Arena, which is on the American University campus.
The Delaware Blue Hens have NCAA tournament experience. Last year they beat Princeton in the first round, before losing to No. 18 St. Johns in four sets. Delaware made it back to the tournament this year after beating No. 1 seed Northeastern in the Colonial Athletic Association tournament in five sets.
Their improbable run from thirsd in the conference to the NCAA tournament is a credit to the strength of the program. The Blue Hens are a young team that features seven freshmen and four sophomores on the roster, with only one senior. In 2007 they finished first in the CAA with a 12-2 conference record, and an overall record of 31-5.
But the buildup to this moment has grown the entire season, and the players are ready to quit talking about things and play. They’ve had a week to prepare since beating then-No. 7 California to finish the regular season, and Newcombe thinks the team is ready.
“I think coach has done a really good job of setting us up,” she said. “We’ve had a couple of tough road trips, traveling to Kansas and to Illinois, and even though this is further than we’ve gone before, we’re ready.”
Moore agrees. The team finally coalesced in the last week, as it put together two good matches in a row against No. 2 Stanford and Cal. Even though the women didn’t beat the Cardinal, he thinks the way they played was a positive indication that things are starting to click.
“We obviously didn’t play well down in Arizona,” Moore said. “But we played very well against Stanford and Cal last weekend. Both matches had a Final Four feel to them. Plus, the travel won’t be a problem. This is what you do, it’s tournament time.”
‘Tournament time’ also means preparing for a team you’ve never seen before. But for Moore, the preparation isn’t something to be worried about. In his career at Oregon he is 45-5 against non-conference teams through the 2008 regular season. One of those non-conference wins came against a potential second-round opponent. In the other match of the Washington, D.C. sub-regional, the home team American University takes on North Carolina. The Ducks beat the Tar Heels in the second match of the season at the State Farm Classic in Champaign, Ill., on Aug. 30.
If Oregon beats Delaware, they would play Saturday night at 6 p.m., and if they again manage to win, the team would have a week off before playing in the Sweet 16 in Austin, Texas on Friday, Dec. 12.
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