It is what the Virginia women's volleyball team has been working toward all year. It has been looming on the horizon as the Cavaliers (18-10, 8-8 ACC) have played through a tough ACC schedule. It is the ACC Championship Tournament, and it starts today with three first round matches at Memorial Gymnasium.
The sixth-seeded Virginia will play in the final match of the first day against the No. 11 seed, N.C. State (10-20, 0-16 ACC). The winner of tonight's match will advance to play third-seed Duke tomorrow night at 7:30 p.m. Despite the Wolfpack's winless conference record, Virginia is not looking past them.
"We're just taking this one game at a time and focusing on N.C. State right now," senior co-captain Alexis Geocaris said. "We've seen in the past anything can happen in this tournament. You never know."
One thing the Cavaliers do know is that they are capable of beating N.C. State, a feat they accomplished the only time the two teams met this season. In that match, played in Raleigh, N.C., Virginia won 3-1 (30-18, 34-36, 30-17, 30-22) despite the Wolfpack recording 14.5 blocks as a team. In that match, the Cavaliers depended on the trio of Geocaris, Lindsay Osco and Sarah Kirkwood to lead them to victory. Each of those three players recorded at least 18 kills. The rest of the Virginia team scored 12 kills combined.
"We're going to try to develop our middle attack to keep them off balance," Virginia coach Melissa Aldrich Shelton said. "The first time we played them we only had three players that did anything against them. So this time we're going to try to get some more players involved and keep them off balance."
One of the players who may be more involved in the offense is middle Stephanie Everett. Everett, a red-shirt sophomore, has been playing well of late. She totaled double-digits in kills in back-to-back matches against Wake Forest and Maryland at the end of October.
Another player who could help the Cavalier offense against the Wolfpack is junior co-captain Kristin Chaney. Chaney suffered an ankle sprain in the Jefferson Cup Tournament on Sept. 10. But she has battled back from injury and on Saturday scored 10 kills that helped Virginia secure its eighth conference win this season.
A setback for the Cavaliers is that they are playing in one of the three "play-in" matches. The matches are necessitated by the fact that there are an odd number of teams in the ACC. Virginia, however, is the highest seeded team playing on the first day of competition.
"I think it's a great game to start on; N.C. State's a great blocking team," Chaney said. "I don't mind playing that extra game. It warms us up and gets us going... I think it is fine."
Shelton has a slightly added incentive to win. A win would give her at least one tournament win for the seventh consecutive year. But Shelton isn't making a big deal out of her coaching successes.
"We don't worry about streaks because they are all circumstantial," Shelton said. "But it shows that our teams are playing their best volleyball at the end of the year."
The Cavaliers also have the added luxury of playing the tournament at home. On the season, Virginia was 11-2 in front of the fans at Mem Gym.
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