UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – Penn State women's volleyball is headed to the NCAA Tournament for a 40th-consecutive season. The 48-team field was released on ESPNU on Sunday, and the Nittany Lions received the No. 13 seed and a first-round bye.
Penn State will play the winner between Rice and North Carolina A&T in the NCAA Second Round on Thursday, April 15, at 10:30 p.m. (ET). The match will stream on ESPN3. Rice and North Carolina A&T's first-round match will be played on Wednesday April 14, at 10:30 p.m. (ET). All matches in the 2021 NCAA Championship will be played in Omaha, Nebraska.
The Lions received an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament after going 9-5 while playing a Big Ten-only schedule during the regular season. All five losses came to opponents that received a top-10 seed in the championship bracket. The Lions closed the season with five straight wins and were unbeaten in their final 14 sets but have not played a match since March 20. It will have been 26 days since the team's last match when it opens play in the tournament.
With Stanford not making the 48-team field, Penn State is now the only program to make all 40 NCAA Division I Women's Volleyball Championship events.
Penn State expects to see a challenging opponent in its opening match of this year's NCAA Tournament. Rice went 16-5 overall and 12-0 in the conference before going on to lose to No. 19 Western Kentucky in the championship match of the Conference USA Tournament. The Owls closed the regular season with wins in 13 of their final 14 matches. They pushed then-No. 6 Baylor to five sets in their only loss and followed that with a 3-2 upset win over then-No. 2 Texas in the regular season finale. North Carolina A&T went 11-1, including two wins to secure the title in the MEAC Championship.
With the entirety of the tournament being played in Omaha this year, Penn State won't host its opening two rounds of the NCAA Tournament at Rec Hall for the first time since 1989.
Other seeded teams in Penn State's quadrant of the bracket are No. 5 Nebraska and No. 12 Baylor on the opposite side and No. 4 Texas on the Lions' side.
Six Big Ten teams made the field and all received one of the top 16 seeds – No. 1 Wisconsin, No. 3 Minnesota, No. 5 Nebraska, No. 7 Purdue, No. 9 Ohio State and No. 13 Penn State.
